[Music] protected from the winter storms blowing off Lake Huron the scible River winds its way through the village of Terre Ontario [Music] five-year-old Fred Taylor lives next to the river [Music] he watches a familiar face from Main Street Jack Riggs the 21 year old barber is the region's champion speed skater for his birthday Jack gives young Fred his first pair of skates [Music] Jack Riggs was a very important person in my life I've never forgotten him and his patience and kindness although I didn't know what a hero was in those days I guess he was my first Fred does not know it but one day these skates will bring him wealth love and fame [Music] the beginning of the new century is a time when legends are born and winter reveals its champions men with dreams and the gladiators who play the game [Music] a clash of cultures leads to the birth of the most legendary team in the game a time when millionaires and mercenaries unite to create professional pocket [Music] [Music] [Applause] by 1900 Canada is an exciting place to be there is a spirit of boundless confidence and booming enterprise the urban age has arrived small shops become factories and stores become empires [Music] mass-production is slowly making the new game of hockey affordable and available I think the development of hockey is a great metaphor for the way Canada develops we're all of a sudden there's factories making both sticks and skates and then there's that wonderful Canadian invention which like the railway populates the country and that's the mail-order catalogue I mean that takes hockey right across the country so that the kid can be as good a player on the prairies as you can be in the Maritimes because he has the same equipment [Music] across Canada hockey's future stars are discovering the game on every frozen pond and River just below the cotton mills of Valleyfield Quebec Didier Peter and Jacques Laviolette play hour after hour with mail-order sticks and skates they can improvise the rest [Music] all over the country factory and farm boys are taking to the ice strap a young men muscling their way into the elite game of hockey [Music] in the small town of Listowel Ontario the poor kids play on the piggery a pond right next to the slaughterhouse [Music] Fred Taylor the boy befriended by the speed skater has added a hockey stick to go with his skates [Music] I've played on a few rinks since then but there was nothing grander than the piggery in its time and place I can still feel that tingle in the nostrils and that sweet bite in the air as we stepped out onto the ice and just cruised around a while with our sticks like lords of the manor Frederick Wellington Taylor is the son of a plow salesman strong and heart working on a 16 mile stretch of the Maitland River Fred escapes alone developing his legs and his speed by the time he's 16 he's fast tough and making a name for himself [Music] [Applause] Fred Taylor starts getting noticed when he's in his mid-teens even the dullards can see his genius and when he goes and plays other teams they all immediately recognize this the lowliest team to a collection of all-stars will realize that's the guy you have to stop he's very much like Wayne Gretzky was in his day he could see the ice and he could put the puck in the net [Music] by 1901 Taylor is a standout player on the local team the Listowel Mintos but it's tough making time for hockey Fred works at the Morris piano factory to help his family make ends meet we were a poor family and with five kids to keep it was a tight squeeze I suppose you'd have to say that the Taylor family was from the wrong side of the tracks but none of that matters to Billy Hewitt secretary of the Ontario Hockey Association a man accustomed to getting what he wants when he hears about the exploits of the list of a Mintos star player Hewitt wants Taylor for his Toronto Marlies team he's the first sort of Godfather of hockey in Ontario they are the people who determine your eligibility who you can play for and and they rule with an iron fist this isn't a bunch of people who are on the look out for your best interest this is the institutionalization of hockey in Ontario and these guys are determined to prove that they are the authority in hockey Fred Taylor gets the call from Billy Hewitt to play big league hockey but he just can't afford to hockey doesn't pay I [Music] was flattered and I wanted to go after all it was my chance to move up into big-time hockey but then I had second thoughts I'd like to list the war my home was there and I had my job in the piano factory I decided to stay put Hewitt is outraged in 1904 he blacklists Fred from playing hockey anywhere in the province of Ontario I don't know if he's drunk on his own power or if they really thought this was an important issue but you know if you don't play where we want you to play you don't play fred is dejected and furious his hockey career seems over before it's even begun [Music] but a few hundred miles away the puck is about to drop on a new sort of game and Taylor will be in the thick of it [Music] on the south shore of Lake Superior in copper country Michigan it said there are two seasons winters here and winters coming whether only a hockey player can love the game from Canada has taken root in this wild American outpost [Music] as the new century Dawn's the age of electricity has produced an insatiable demand for copper the mines that dot the landscape of northern Michigan attract thousands of immigrants looking to cash in on the boom copper country is full of fortune hunters miners and dreamers one of the new immigrants is Canadian John Gibson a 21 year old dentist who also happens to be a great hockey player he joins the Portage Lakers two local amateur hockey team and makes a life for himself in Copper Country it's not some sort of podunk mining community there are a hundred thousand people in the region there are four newspapers there are multiple languages spoken they can find God in thirty churches or more than sixty bars there's also Saturday night with nothing to do money to spend you can go to the saloon but that's about it and along comes hockey [Applause] [Music] the portage Lakers already draw large crowds one of the regulars is local business tycoon James Rd he wants to turn small-town hockey into big-time business so in 1902 d builds himself a castle complete with towers and parapets it's called the amphidromic james d boasts its the largest enclosed ice rink in america if I do say it the amphidromic in the world which I hope the people will be convinced of before the season is over in the meantime we prepare to give our patrons the best hockey that money can furnish to fill the seats in his brand-new arena d strikes a bold plan in this remote part of the continent he creates the first professional hockey league in the world the international league in northern Michigan in the Upper Peninsula was important because for the first time professionalism was open it was out there there was none of this hypocrisy about on our only amateurs just ignore that twenty dollar bill in your skate that you find after after the game this was open professionalism it's it's show business it's entertainment let's pay him and enjoy the show to staff the new league James D turns to the man who knows the game better than anyone else in town doc Gibson doc Gibson is clearly the right person in the right place at the right time and James de sees an opportunity you know I've got the money you've got the talent and I guess enough of the connections that you can get the players we need will pay for them you know where these guys are go get him so doc Gibson goes home to Canada he puts out the word that you can play for pay in Michigan it's the offer Canadian hockey players have been waiting for one by one Canada's best follow the money [Music] among the first to go are the two boyhood friends from Valleyfield Quebec Jack Laviolette is now 26 years old and a natural leader on the ice and big didier pita whose habit of toasting the fans between periods has made him a crowd pleaser in Montreal [Music] another recruit is eighteen-year-old printers apprentice at wild new zealand he leaves Cornwall Ontario with nothing but a train ticket in his pocket his first pro game in Michigan is a bit distressing I was ended my uniform and equipment what I got was a pair of rugby pants tatted front and back a shirt that came down to my knees over long stockings full of owls and skates at least two sizes too big [Music] despite the ragtag gear lallan scores the game-winning goal in a most improbable fashion [Music] the rising puck landed in the seat of my pants and dropped to the ice behind me I flipped around nabbed a loose puck waltzed in unopposed and score [Music] [Applause] the move makes Lalonde famous in the new league the fans love their stars and the rough tough world of pro hockey the Houghton daily mining Gazette teases readers with stories of hot new prospects arriving almost daily and none hotter than the kid who was banned from playing in Ontario Fred Taylor [Music] Taylor is one of the fastest and most effective if not the very best player that Canada has ever produced and now takes up professional hockey for the first time in his life the portage lake boys are just glad he's playing here while hockey is booming in Michigan back in Canada the amateur hockey czars fume as they watch their players and profits slip away the Canadian game could not afford to allow players to start signing with American teams or showing up in American mining towns because the man in Canada would lose control and the minute that they did that then hockey would cease to become that profitable little Empire that it was even at the turn of the century the Canadian hockey establishment fights back with a familiar weapon the threat of banishment Member of Parliament and amateur hockey kingpin John Ross Robertson lashes out for self-protection the stand of the Ontario Hockey Association against professionalism must be uncompromising ly antagonistic any hockey player who figures on any of these teams must be banished from Ontario Hockey but the newer of money is stronger than the threat of expulsion and the talent drain continues [Music] from 1904 to 1907 pro hockey in Michigan is so popular the railway puts on special cars for fans to get to the games and for gamblers telephones deliver play-by-play to hotels and saloons [Music] [Applause] [Music] but as quickly as it started the league comes crashing down recession hits the American economy and a copper market collapses the boom town resembles a ghost town Houghton's brush with hockey history is over doc Gibson heads home and will serve at the front in World War one James Dee's next big venture is in motion pictures and years later on a cold January night the amphidromic Rand [Music] but the little experiment in northern Michigan has let the genie out of the bottle pro hockey is here to stay [Music] [Music] in 1907 the Canora thistles bring home to Stanley Cup two celebrations and a parade down Main Street but Canora is the last small town team to win the Cup the success of pro hockey in the United States has forced Canadian teams to play the money game and towns like Canora can no longer compete the town is too small to fund a team of professional caliber and the thistles represent very starkly and and in a bittersweet way that transition between the amateur and the professional in the world of hockey encounter for the first time in Canada there are more people living in cities than in the country [Music] Ottawa is a working-class town struggling to become a modern capital the politicians and bureaucrats work in the new government buildings Yetta stone's throw away across the river workers toil in the pulp mills of the eb eddy company [Music] it's a town divided along class lines but the hockey rink is common ground from 1903 to 1905 Ottawa's silver 7 ruled as one of hockey's great dynasties in those amateur days their star player was one-eyed Frank McGee now with Canadian teams starting to go professional Ottawa wants to buy themselves a new star [Music] when pro hockey in michigan collapsed fred taylor had offers waiting for him he took the one from the Ottawa Senators $500 for a 10 game season not the most money offered but the deal came with a bonus a job in a civil service he's a guy who can go on the ice and tell you I want this much money and I'm worth it then prove it to the crowd he's a great skater he can score he's a dynamic presence on the ice so you get this marriage of nominees he a great player but you know what he's worth the money that we're paying to him [Music] January 1908 [Applause] a packed day arena witnesses Fred Taylor's first game in the red white and black the Ottawa Citizen is thrilled with Taylor's efforts against the rival Montreal Wanderers Tayler approved the sensation of the night such defensive play and individual work up the forward line has never been seen before in Ottawa [Music] after watching tailors score four goals governor-general Earl Gray calls him a cyclone and the name sticks the boy from Listowel becomes known as cyclone tailor also watching that night is mr. Zhu cook and auburn-haired beauty who works as a government secretary [Music] at an office party on the Rideau Canal Fred asks the young lady to skate [Music] Tayler describes himself as a gone goose after the party I walked her home a fine house in the best part of town she took me in for a few minutes right from the beginning and it wasn't a very good one her mother Emilia who was a widow made it quite clear to me that she didn't want her daughter to have anything to do with any hockey player he's run into the old class battle on the ice he's a hit with the Ottawa fans bringing them a Stanley Cup in his first season off the ice he's still just a son of a plow salesman but Fred Taylor has found his love and hopes to prove himself worthy to mrs. cook he vows to earn $10,000 before he asks for the hand of thurzo and the kid from the wrong side of the tracks knows how to get that money you a few miles up the Ottawa River from the nation's capital senator MJ O'Brien is about to shake up big-time hockey and along the way create the most legendary hockey team in history renfrew belongs to the elegant millionaire senator MJ O'Brien the family owns a mansion a private railway car and built an opera house in the heart of the Ottawa Valley the senator also owns the Renfrew Creamery Kings a hockey team named after the town Derry they have five straight local championships now O'Brien wants a shot at the Stanley Cup but it's controlled by owners in Ottawa and Montreal who aren't interested in small arenas with small town revenues [Music] there is no incentive anymore for the hockey owners in the big cities to want to play with the smaller towns we can't go into a town like Canora or a town like Renfrew with our large payrolls of you know $10,000 and make money [Music] the senator sends his 24-year old son Ambrose O'Brien to Montreal in one last attempt at getting his Creamery kings into the big league but he's kept waiting in the lobby of the Windsor Hotel for hours and never gets his meeting with the owners O'Brien bumps into Jimmy Gardner of the Montreal Wanderers also rejected by the hockey kingpins the two castoffs create a rebel league on the back of Windsor hotel stationery they named it the National Hockey Association and prepare to go to war with a hockey establishment [Music] there are many occasions where history Trump's fiction and this is one of them here you have these two rejects who can't get into the big leagues hockey coming together to form their own and out of that formation come two of the greatest institutions in professional hockey one of them a league and one of them a team O'Brien strategy is to build his renfrew Creamery Kings into a team so powerful it can't be denied a shot at the Stanley Cup and in the new world of professional hockey that's gonna take money lots of it the Patrick brothers Frank and Lester are two of the game's rising stars offers for their services come from Montreal to Edmonton when O'Brien Telegraph's his interest they want to know how deep the Senators pockets go we demanded not asked demanded $5,000 plus all expenses you can imagine my surprise when Renfrew replied okaying our proposition the signing of the Patrick brothers creates big news O'Brien means business [Music] but his next catch is the biggest he signs cyclone Taylor to play 12 games for the fee of five thousand two hundred and fifty dollars more money than the Prime Minister makes more money per game than any other athlete in any sport the O'Briens at that time were very wealthy men and crazy about hockey you know if I'd held out I could have got a lot more money they would have paid almost anything to get me and they said so [Music] cyclone Taylor going from team to team getting the best price he can from each of these teams and with no loyalty moving from team to team I think he he creates starts the cycle of commercialism in hockey that we see to this very day by the time the old Brian's are finished their payroll is so high the renfrew Creamery kings become known as the millionaires but it's gonna take more than millionaires to make the upstart league work it needs a rivalry and Montreal has one made to order the historic clash between French and English they realize there's a great business opportunity in this new league that's to establish a team for French Canadians because there's a huge market out there wanting to see that and there are French Canadian players who are stars and it can be done and it's time [Music] with $15,000 of O'Briens money they finance a new french-canadian team at first the colors are blue and white but the Big C is there they're called lei Canadian [Music] but French Montreal errs already have their own team lanessa now stocked with French players they are on the verge of breaking into the big leagues the Nationals are poised to become that team that the community has hoped for for so long and yet they collide with history history in the form of the Montreal Canadiens with O'Brien's money the new team scoops up the best French players [Music] newsela long Jack Laviolette and the biggest french-canadian star of them all DDA Pete fans love him he lives fast drinks hard and plays harder his booming shot earns him the title cannonball but the team that would one day be the pride and joy of Quebecers starts life hated in its own community if you were a national supporter and be very very disappointed outraged in fact and there were cries of outrage that this had happened because the English just waltzed in and you now wholesale taken over the French Canadian aspirations by creating a team for French Canadians but it was created by English guys the French newspapers go ballistic on the ice the Canadians represent only the interests in the pots of money of mr. O Brien and not the French Canadian nationality if flick energy remains the only senior Aki team made up of French Canadians it is not accepted [Music] but it doesn't take long for the exploits of Pizza Lalande and la viola to win the hearts of French fans with their speed and finesse they are nicknamed the flying Frenchman a legend inherited by future Canadian stars [Music] over the years this plaything of an English millionaire would be embraced by French Canadians and become one of the most storied franchises in sports history [Music] [Applause] [Music] first time like worthy montreal canadiens equipment when i go on the ice it's like I have to pinch myself to really believe that I'm there and and that feeling I had that feeling every year to my career you know all the games that I played you know I felt so lucky to be there I'm still dreaming [Laughter] senator O'Brien never dreamed the montreal canadiens would be so successful nor did he imagine what would become of his rebel league the National Hockey Association in 1917 it will evolve into the National Hockey League but what he wanted most he never got the star-studded renfrew millionaires failed to win a Stanley Cup and folded after two seasons but in this age of dreamers as one scheme dies another is born and one of the wildest is hatching on Canada's Pacific coast [Music] [Music] Joe Patrick looks at trees and sees dollars [Applause] [Music] it's boom time in British Columbia where virgin forests can be cut down for a hundred and forty dollars a square mile in 1911 Joe sells his company for a reported 1 million dollars [Music] his two sons Lester and Frank have no trouble spending dad's money [Music] Frank buys a brand-new roadster but the two boys have much bigger plans they've been star players back east on the renfrew millionaires now they have grand visions for the future of the game immediately after the sale my father Frank and I sat down and discussed the family future the idea was firmly planted to start a new Hockey League we were just young hockey players with a lot of dreams [Music] hockey seems to be a crazy idea on the west coast of Canada I mean you don't have winter to speak of the way you do in the rest of the country except it rains a lot but you do have a large urban population 150,000 people in the great American region so they have an audience and they have the wherewithal to do it so what you need is to build a rink with artificial ice the electric age has brought refrigeration and the Patricks draw up plans for arenas in Victoria and Vancouver that can make ice in any weather anytime hockey's reach is now boundless in december of nineteen eleven the patrick's open the Denman arena the largest artificial ice rink in the world a month later they launched the Pacific Coast Hockey Association they've got the ice they've got the league now they need the players [Music] in what is now a time-honored tradition the patrick's head east on a raiding party the Ottawa Free Press complains of a bidding war the Pacific Coast moguls have scored heavily against the Eastern League's they have already stolen eight outstanding eastern stars and have pushed salaries everywhere sky-high pockys mercenaries are on the move again a Patricks recruit their former teammates Edouard New Zealand and Didier cannonball Pete but Frank Patrick has a harder time convincing the game's biggest star we had cyclone Taylor in mind for our league right from the beginning he was our number one priority it was just a matter of timing Frank [Music] in just six years hockey's greatest player has worn the uniform of three different proteins and at the age of 27 he's become a shrewd negotiator it takes Joe Patrick's special connections in Ottawa to get cyclone what he really wants his civil service job transferred to Vancouver Fred Taylor was so good that prank Patrick who was one of hockey's greatest visionaries of any era coined the word superstar for him specifically now this to my knowledge is the first time the word appears in the lexicon and Frank Patrick was not a man who handed out compliments like that willy nilly he saw Taylor and said he's it [Music] the Patrick's and their Vancouver millionaires have their star now they set out to make the game more exciting for the West Coast fans even back in their boardinghouse days in Renfrew cyclone had listened in awe to Frank and Lester's big ideas at dinner the talk always got around to hockey Frank was always there with his ideas and views Lester embellished them and the rest of us would just sit and listen with the greatest respect of course none of us dreamed then that Frank and Lester between them would eventually change so much of the game the Patrick's more than most other players of their time really thought about what makes the game and what makes it work and what makes it not work so now that they've got this league of their own they can try the rules they want to try their first innovation is putting numbers on jerseys to help fans keep track of the players they allow goalies to fall to stop a shot and knowing the drama of a one-on-one duel they create the penalty shot [Applause] [Music] [Applause] but the stroke of genius is the change that makes hockey the fastest game on earth the forward pass [Music] [Applause] if you're looking at the legacy of the Patrick's if they enable the forward pass to become the primary weapon of offensive hockey prior to that had been like rugby pass it back or pass it sideways they made possible Howie Morenz they made possible Guy Lafleur they made possible Wayne Gretzky and then when you can make the pass the game opened up and flourished now I mean that in a way in a great way so was the game open up and you're able to pass it from here a to B to C that completely changed the whole mindset of playing the game of hockey points four assists line substitutions farm teams a playoff system a third period the Patrick brothers create the modern age of hockey [Music] hockey and Vancouver suits cyclone to a tee in 1915 he leads the millionaires to victory over the Ottawa Senators and the Stanley Cup comes to the west coast for the first time the traveling days are over for hockey's hired gun he has close to ten thousand dollars in his bank account and his fiance's mother relents after six long years of courtship the grand old man of hockey marries his sweetheart cyclone and his bride settled in Vancouver years later Fred Taylor will join the other greats of his day DDA Peet New Zealand Jack Laviolette and the Patrick brothers as legends of the game in hockey's Hall of Fame the dreamers schemers and stars have made hockey a truly national passion a sport once played by upper-class college boys has become a showbiz spectacle about to burst onto the international stage [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you