A Moment of Genius

Professional hockey grants no favors. There's more money for the winners, and the way to win is to learn your opponent's weaknesses and play to them. The players that do just that scale the pinnacle of greatness, while others fall by the wayside and the hours of their servitude to the game leave their personalities bare as they walk alone with their dreams.

Alfie Moore was a hockey player who had come a long way on such a lonely road. But he scaled the heights one night – he invaded the sanctum of the holiest of the holies in one of the greatest games on earth – then he dropped back into the abyss of obscurity.

He was sitting in a Toronto pub that night, soaking up ale like a sponge. It was six p.m. when they found him and they told him: "Come along, drink up. You have to play tonight."

He looked at them through swimming eyes and muttered: "But they said they didn't need me ..." and they replied: "That was this afternoon. You're going (concluded on page 63)Moment of Genius(continued from page 28) to play tonight – for us – for the other team."

The day, April 5, 1938, hadn't promised any such ending. Though he had planned to be present when the Chicago Black Hawks and the Toronto Maple Leafs opened play at the Maple Leaf Gardens for the Stanley Cup, the symbol of the world hockey championship, Alfie Moore wasn't going to be on the ice. He was a minor-league goalie with Toronto's Pittsburgh farm team, and if he wanted to see the play-off he had to get himself a ticket. He strolled toward the box office that afternoon, and as he walked. Fate crooked an invisible finger in his direction.

Mike Karakas, Chicago goalie, had suffered a broken big toe on his right foot the night before, and the Black Hawk physician couldn't patch it up. He tried aluminum splints and slit shoes, but Mike still couldn't put any weight on the foot. General Manager Bill Tobin and Coach Bill Stewart tried to contact their spare goalie, Paul Goodman, but his season had ended a month earlier and he wasn't to be found. They were stuck, and forced to go into conference with Connie Smythe. the volatile owner of the Toronto club.

Dave Kerr, the regular New York Ranger goalie, was in town, and willing. Could Chicago use him in this emergency? In a burst of good sportsmanship, Smythe agreed, but just as the sun set he changed his mind.

Tobin and Stewart rushed to Smythe's office for a showdown. They appealed to the president of the National Hockey League, who upheld the Toronto boss. Smythe, with a smile, suggested Moore, his own minor-leaguer. There was no time to protest further, as Smythe knew – but where was Moore?

"I saw him earlier at the Gardens," said Stewart. But he was neither there nor at home now.

"You better find him," said Smythe.

They found him. They had to. Stewart, now a National League baseball umpire, remembers it clearly, as do Johnny Gottselig and Paul Thompson, twin stars of the Black Hawks in those days. They checked his friends and his haunts, and finally dug him up and hustled him into a cab.

In the Black Hawk dressing room, Tobin and Stewart eased Alfie under a cold shower, forced him to drink hot, black coffee. The other players dressed slowly, almost painfully. They had sneaked into the play-offs through the back door – had won only fourteen games all season – had wound up in the Cup fight smelling of arnica and flinching from tape, but determined to go all out. Now they had to play the finals with a minor-league goalie in the nets – a minor-leaguer who was – to put it mildly – out of condition.

The Black Hawks clumped up the stairs to face a crowd of 13,737 Maple Leal fans. When the crowd caught sight of Moore, it let out a roar of laughter. Word had gotten around that Smythe had knifed Chicago in the back. At the moment, "English Alfie" (Arf-and-Arf, they called him) couldn't even turn back Chicago practice shots.

Then the whistle blew, the referee dropped the puck in center ice. There was a clash of sticks between centers, and the game was on.

Apps, Drillon and Bob Davidson, Toronto's ace forward line, swirled into action. Once, twice, three times they swung against Chicago defense, their white-jerseyed, blue-trunked bodies caroming off the boards as Art Wiebe and Earl Seibert, Hawk defense men, broke up the drives at their own blue line. Then the Maple Leaf trio came in again, and this time there was no stopping it. Drillon sped to his right, cut in behind Wiebe and took a perfect pass from Davidson. His stick flashed. The puck went hurtling past Moore and Toronto led, 1-0.

The first shot on the Chicago net, in one minute and fifty-three seconds of play, was good. The Toronto bench beat a rataplan of applause, and the crowd sat back to cheer an easy conquest. Unhappy Alfie looked flushed and foolish.

But he brushed the cobwebs away and bent his back once more, and Moore the patsy became Moore the cornered fox. A new Toronto line came onto the ice, charged the Chicago goal and went home without a score. They rushed in again, and again Alfie Moore turned them back. He kicked away shots at either corner, picked the puck out of the air above his head, flung it off his chest and knee pads. He did the splits with the abandon of a ballet dancer. He sprawled on his back and on his belly, smothering every attempt to beat him, until, up in the press box, a reporter said: "You can't tell me he sees all those ..."

Maybe he didn't. But at the end of the first period Toronto still had one goal, and the Black Hawks had tied the score.

Through twenty minutes of the second period, Alfie Moore kept the gates closed, and Chicago took a 2-1 lead. Black Hawk forwards kept back-checking the Maple Leaf wings to ease the pressure on little Alfie. who shuttled the width of his cage, his body soaked with sweat. Only a few hours before he had been relaxing in a tap over a friendly ale; now he was a great goalie in a great game.

Toronto never scored again. The Maple Leafs drilled 45 shots at Alfie and 45 times he stopped the puck, until the final whistle blew, and the green light (lashed, and the Hawks had won, 3-1, and were swarming over little "Arf-and Arf." But he fought them off, broke away, and skated to the Toronto railing, and flung his face before the angry features of Connie Smythe. "... And if I'd had one more beer," he jeered happily, "you wouldn't have got that goal!"

In the dressing room, players said things to him that made his eyes smart and then General Manager Tobin spoke: "We didn't make any deal, Moore. You got money coming. How much?"

Alfie thought $150 would be about right. Tobin handed him $300. He was taken to Chicago with the team, given a great welcome in the Stadium, and a watch as a souvenir.

But Alfie didn't play again. Smythe wouldn't let him. With Goodman and Karakas in the nets, the Black Hawks rode roughshod over Toronto, three games to one, for the world championship. A year later Moore tried to come back in the big time with the New York Americans. He got licked twice, 4-0 and 2-0.

He never won another major-league game after his once-in-a-lifetime stand.