Remembering the NHL's longest game, Part II

Caddell, then a 22-year-old Montreal office clerk, was in the arena that night/morning, though he was asleep on his rush-end bench seat when Bruneteau scored at 2:25 a.m.

The next morning, in his "Sports on Parade'' column, The Gazette's Dunc MacDonald reported this about the historic puck that ended the game:

"Half a dozen fans wanted it but Lorne refused to give up the prize. As he wearily pulled off his pads after the game, the idea came to him that young Bruneteau would probably like the puck for a souvenir.''

Surrendered Puck

MacDonald reported further that Chabot surrendered the puck to Red Wings coach Jack Adams, who was said to have given it to Bruneteau.

These "facts'' were detailed deep in our recent feature, nine paragraphs from the end, in fact, and it was upon reading them that Lois Biley picked up the telephone.

"Mud Bruneteau might have been given a puck, but it was not the puck that went into the net that night,'' she insisted. "How do I know? Because my Uncle Lorne gave me that one.''

Lois Biley was a 13-year-old schoolgirl from Notre Dame de Grâce that March night in 1936, and like most games in which Lorne Chabot played, she was sitting with her mother, Lillian, at the end of the players' bench. Typically, her father, Kenneth McCarty, was sitting elsewhere in the arena.

"Uncle Lorne was my mother's brother, and no matter who he was playing for he'd get two tickets, always for my mother and me, near the end of his bench in the Forum,'' she recalls.

The Maroons-Red Wings playoff game dragged on well past midnight - on a school night - but never did Lois allow her mother to entertain a thought of leaving. Then, at 2:25 in the morning, Bruneteau mercifully ended it on a pass from Hec Kilrea.

Madder than a wet hen

"Uncle Lorne was madder than a wet hen,'' Lois remembers. "He was muttering and cursing and practically spitting nails when he left the ice.

"He almost threw the puck at my mother and me, he was so mad. I took it home, and every once in a while I'd take it out of my drawer and let my friends look at it.

"But I wouldn't let them touch it.''

More than a half-century later, Lois Biley still had "Uncle Lorne's puck'' in a drawer in her Pierrefonds home, tucked away with the serious guilt she felt for hoarding such a unique piece of hockey history. So in July 1988 she called broadcaster Dick Irvin and invited him to drop by for a look.

Of course, Irvin couldn't absolutely verify the game-scarred puck as being Bruneteau's winner, but he instantly recognized it as being one of that day; his father, the superb NHL coach Dick Irvin Sr., often had brought one home. It bore the lettering "Official National League'' and carried the baseball-shaped seal of its American manufacturer, A.G. Spalding & Bros.

"The puck had a funny feel, almost like wood because it was so old,'' recalls Irvin, who that October taped a segment about it for his CFCF-TV Hockey Magazine show.

Irvin took the puck to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, then located at lakeshore Exhibition Place, and turned it over to Hall chairman Scotty Morrison. Today it hangs at the "new'' Hall in downtown Toronto's BCE Place, a display featuring a plaque that includes the name of Bruneteau but not that of the man he beat. Neither player, both deceased, is a member of the Hall, though Chabot's excellent statistics suggest he at least should merit some discussion for selection in the veteran's category.

Born in Montreal on Oct. 5, 1900, Chabot began his career at age 20 with the Manitoba Senior Hockey League's Brandon Wheat Kings, and in the mid-1920s he backstopped the Port Arthur Bearcats to two consecutive Allan Cup national championships. At 6-foot-1 and 185 pounds, huge for a goaltender of the day, he caught the eye of New York Rangers manager Conn Smythe.

Smythe signed Chabot to a Rangers contract in 1926 and immediately nicknamed him "Chabotsky'' in a bid to attract more Jewish fans. The goaler changed address many times during his 11 NHL seasons, playing for Toronto, Canadiens, Chicago, Maroons and finally the New York Americans. He was packaged in trades with some of the greatest names in hockey history: George Hainsworth, Howie Morenz, Toe Blake and Lionel (Big Train) Conacher.

Chabot retired in 1937, two years after having been named a first-team NHL all-star and winner of the Vezina Trophy while with Chicago. He earned 73 career shutouts, good for eighth place on the all-time list, and his name is twice engraved on the Stanley Cup - with the Rangers in 1928 and Dick Irvin's '32 Maple Leafs. In nine playoff seasons Chabot had a goals-against average of 1.54, and his lifetime 2.04 is among the best in the game, ever.

Remarkable Lore

A few years later he contracted Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system, and in the early 1940s, widowed, his sister took him into her N.D.G. home. Lillian and Kenneth McCarty and their daughter, Lois, cared for him until his death on Oct. 10, 1946.

Chabot's performance in the NHL's longest game is only part of his remarkable lore. As a Ranger en route to the Stanley Cup in the 1928 final, a shot by Maroons' Nels Stewart struck him above the eye and knocked him out of a Forum game, putting Lester Patrick, New York's 44-year-old general manager, in nets as his substitute. And as a Maple Leaf in 1933, he played in what is the league's second-longest game, earning a 1-0 victory over Boston in 104 minutes and 46 seconds of overtime.

Lois Biley cherishes those stories, of course, but her favourite memory about her favourite goaler won't be found in any record book:

"Uncle Lorne had come to the house one night for supper, as he often did when he was in town (with a visiting team),'' she recalls, "and I gave him one of the cupcakes I had baked in cooking class at school.

"He picked it up and looked at it,'' she says, now laughing heartily, "and he said to me, `You know, Lois, this would make a good hockey puck.' ''

Lois Biley in 1999 with a photograph of her famous uncle, Lorne Chabot.
John Kenney, Gazette