The Eskimos—Alberta's First Shot At A Stanley Cup

In 1908, the Edmonton Eskimos, the city’s most popular team at the time, won the Alberta Hockey League championship, which gave the club the right to challenge for the Stanley Cup.

But, because the Montreal Wanderers had already won three challenges (over the Ottawa Victorias, the Toronto Trolley Leaguers and the Winnipeg Maple Leafs) to end the 1907-08 season, they could not accept the Eskimos’ Cup challenge until December of 1908, with a new hockey season already underway.

The 1908 match-up between the Eskimos and Wanderers would go down as the most controversial final to date, and is still ranked as one of the most controversial in history. The team would have to travel to Montreal to contest the trophy, as Edmonton’s Thistle Rink was not up to the standard required by the Stanley Cup trustees. Worried about the Wanderers’ firepower, Eskimos president James McKinnon decided to revamp his lineup. The Eskimos’ roster for the 1908 final was made up of only seven players; six were brought in especially for the Stanley Cup series, including future Hall of Famers Lester Patrick (at the time, considered the best defenceman the game had ever seen and a former Wanderer who had helped Montreal win the Cup in 1907) and Didier Pitre (who would later be part of the first-ever Montréal Canadiens champion team of 1916). It was a move which caused major waves across the country. Trustees howled that the Eskimos were cheating. Frankly, the team was only taking advantage of the lack of regulations governing the challenges, as players were not required to be part of the team regular roster in order to be eligible for the Cup challenge.

At the time, a hockey team was made up of three forwards, two defenders, a rover and a goaltender. So, when the Eskimos named a seven-man roster, there would be no one available on the bench. Each and every player would have to play a full game—that’s a far cry from the modern day, where a player who logs 30 minutes of ice time is considered a horse.

And that’s a major reason McKinnon’s strategy backfired. The ringers were not in game shape, and could not handle Montreal’s attacks. The Wanderers won the first of the two-game total-goals series by a 7-3 count. Criticized by Edmonton fans and angry about the lackluster performance in Game 1, McKinnon put three of his regular Eskimos in the lineup for Game 2, knowing that Edmonton needed to win the game by five goals in order to win the Cup. Regulars Harold Deeton and Jack Miller helped the cause, leading the Eskimos to a wild 7-6 win. But the margin of victory was not large enough, and the Wanderers took the Cup by a 13-10 aggregate score.

Even though the Eskimos lost the final, McKinnon’s antics forced Stanley Cup trustees to adopt new rules limiting the number of players that could be brought in for a challenge. Never again would a team be allowed to stack itself with ringers.

It did not take long for McKinnon to wipe the egg off his face. Two years later, the Eskimos made another Cup challenge, this time taking on the Ottawa Senators, champions of the fledgling National Hockey Association. The Senators had already easily defended the Cup against a club from Galt, Ontario (outscoring the challengers 15-4 in a two-game, total goals series) but pundits expected the Eskimos, this time without ringers, to provide a real challenge.

Governor General Earl Grey, the man who gave Canada its national football trophy, opened the series by dropping the ceremonial face-off in the nation’s capital. The two games were wild, high-scoring affairs; Fred Whitcroft scored five times for Edmonton in the series, but the Eskimos’ defence was shredded by Bruce Stuart and Gordie Roberts, who each scored seven times in the series. The Senators beat the Eskimos by 8-4 and 13-7 scores.

The Eskimos had failed in their bid for the Cup; but their successes were a major reason that city fathers decided that the time had come for Edmonton to have a major indoor rink. Three years later, the building that would become the Edmonton Gardens was opened, and the Eskimos deserved a lot of the credit for making the city’s first grand indoor arena a reality.

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