1919 Stanley Cup: Ultimate Loss

On April first, nineteen nineteen, was the first time ever two teams were listed on the Stanley Cup as the series had started, but they canceled it due to complications with the Spanish Flu. Here's the story behind this memorable and sad moment in sports history. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history every day. Now, the nineteen nineteen season had its ups and downs due to the Spanish Flu really starting to take place starting in nineteen eighteen. Now, we all know about the pandemic of Conad nineteen and it was often compared to the Spanish Flu as it was our last previous pandemic. That there was over five hundred million cases and between twenty five and fifty million deaths, with some estimates being as high as one hundred million. But given all this, they did something similar to what we had during the twenty twenty pandemic. They shut things down. It's hard to believe, but yes they did. They were trying to stop the spread as much as they could. This even meant that they shut down a lot of sports that were going on in Seattle, where the Stanley Cup was supposed to take place. They had just started to open things up in nineteen nineteen, which allowed the Stanley Cup to take place there. Now, back then, the Stanley Cup was not just an NHL trophy. It had been passed around to different leagues and was mainly just an award for the best hockey team. So the NHL represented more of the eastern side of hockey, where as the Pacific Coast Hockey Association known as the PCCHA represented the West. Now the two This is very similar to in baseball, they had the American League and National League, who used to be two separate things, played together for the World Series. Or in the NFL they had the American Football League and the National Football League playing each other for the Super Bowl. Very similar back then for the Stanley Cup, and the two teams that met each other were the Montreal Canadians and the Seattle Metropolitans better known as the Seattle Mets. Now, before these two teams played, they actually played to see who would win THEIRS perspective leagues, and the Montreal Canadians played against the Ottawa Senators in a best of seven series, with the Canadians winning four games to one and the Seattle Mets took on the Vancouver Millionaires to see who would win the PCCHA regular season championship. I know, I wish there were still Vancouver's Millionaires because that is a great team name, but unfortunately, despite that name, they were not able to pull out the victory. They played a two game championship series where the total amount of points scored would lead to who won the championship for that association, and the Mets won seven to five, leading to the Stanley Cup Finals featuring the Montreal Canadians versus the Seattle Metropolitans. Travel was very difficult back then and the two teams were a five day train ride away from each other, so they decided to hold the championship in Seattle. For all the games, they were alternate games based off the league rules. Game one, three, and five would go off the Pacific Coast rules, in game two and four would go off the NHL rules. The main difference in these rules was the Pacific Coast League had seven players on the ice at a time with an extra position called the rover, and the NHL rules only had six. As well as the Pacific League had forward passing and the NHL did not so they come into the first game, which is done by the Pacific Coast rules that the Seattle Ice Arena, which at the time fit about two thousand and five hundred people, but they were packing over three thousand people in for every single game, with people even looking in from the roof, as they had lifted the restrictions in Seattle from the pandemic, and everyone wanted to come out and see something, and this was the first major event in the city and they all wanted to come see But that first game, the Seattle Metropolitans, playing by their league rules in the Pacific Coast, dominated the game and won seven to zero. The next game was done by the NFL rules, and then Montreal Canadians came out and run four to two. Switching back to the Pacific Coast rules, Seattle again came out scoring with another seven goal game, winning seven to two. But Game four is when things start to get a little interesting and things start to go a little different than any other Stanley Cup final. After playing a whole game going scoreless, they go into overtime and play another twenty minutes scoreless. Both goalies blocked every shot coming to them, and by the end of twenty minutes in overtime, players were starting to collapse on the ice, and maybe they were already starting to show signs of sickness, but nobody wanted to believe that the flu was still around. They all just thought these guys were tired playing this whole game, so they called the game, saying the tie and they would play the game four by the NHL rules, which was technically going to be Game five. Came into the fifth game and the Seattle Metropolitans led of the series two to one, but the next game was done by NHL rules and the Montreal Canadians were able to come back with an overtime win four to three. But this game also had multiple players collapse due to exhaustion, and the Mets only had only had one substitute player left as all their players were too exhausted to take the ice anymore. So the final game of the series was set to be the sixth game, and the series was tied two to two and it was to be played on April first, But before that game could be taken to place, three Metropolitan players had been taken to the hospitals with fevers between one hundred and one one hundred and five degrees fahrenheit and due to this, they canceled the game just five and a half hours before it was supposed to start, and the Montreal Canadians actually tried to forfeit the game, but the coach for the Seattle Metropolitans, Pete Muldoon, refused to accept the Cup in a forfeit and wanted to actually delay the series and maybe actually move it to Vancouver as they were not experiencing an outbreak again of the Spanish flu which was now happening in Seattle, so they decided to wait until maybe both the teams got to feel better. But four days after the last game was set to take place, one of the enforcers for the Montreal Canadians, Joe Hall, who was the very first enforcer in NHL history, despite only being five eight and one hundred and seventy pounds and didn't stop him from throwing his body around in dictating how the game was going to be played every day. But despite being in good health and great physical condition, on April fifth, nineteen nineteen, he passed away of pneumonia brought on by the Spanish flu. He left behind a wife and three kids up in Vancouver, and after he passed away, they canceled the series and the engraving they put on the Stanley Cup for the nineteen nineteen season reads Montreal Canadians Seattle Metropolitans. The series not completed. It's a very sad ending, but one that many of us know too well. After the COVID nineteen pandemic, many of us lost loved ones, and in nineteen nineteen, many people lost the ones they love. And sometimes sports isn't what's important, just being a human and caring about the people around you. And I applaud both leagues for deciding not to try to finish the Cup, as being a champion is not worth losing a life. And in nineteen sixty one, Joe Hall was honored by being inducted the Hockey Hall of Fame so he can always be remembered. Thank you for listening to today's daily sports history. I hope you enjoyed it. I know sometimes sports has sad moments, but it goes to show you that sports have all the emotion. Sometimes we'll get emotional, sometimes we'll have fun. Sports history. Is it always gonna give you the same emotion? I hope you learned something today because I always do, and come back tomorrow to learn more on daily sports history.