The Captain's Great Uncles are back in the news!

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Cleghorn set standard for CH blue-liners
Souray on pace to join 1920s icon, who was last Canadiens rearguard to lead team in points

DAVE STUBBS, The Montreal Gazette
Published: Monday, February 12, 2007

Early in 2004, three months into a career-best season and a freshly minted first-time National Hockey League all-star, Canadiens defenceman Sheldon Souray was hearing his name used in the same sentence as the late, legendary Doug Harvey.

Souray's goal and five assists that January against Pittsburgh broke the record for points in a game by a Canadiens defenceman, held jointly by Harvey and Lyle Odelein. But hearing his name mentioned with Harvey's? A Hall of Famer and 13-time all-star who won six Stanley Cups between 1952-60, seven Norris trophies as the league's best defenceman, and captained the Canadiens?

"The only Harvey they've ever associated me with," Souray joked, "is the place you go to build your own burger."

Now, three seasons later, some mention Souray in the same breath as Sprague Cleghorn, a Canadiens' blue-line icon of eight decades ago. In keeping with his fast-food theme, Souray should know there's a Cleghorn House of Pizza not far from Boston.

Souray leads the Canadiens with 18 goals and 28 assists, outpacing the 16-28 of captain Saku Koivu.

Opinion is divided on the fact that a defenceman leads the Canadiens in scoring. Is this a case of a rearguard enjoying a wonderful year, or a troubling sign of the club's offensive malaise?

You'll need to rewind to 1921-22 to find the last time a defenceman led the Canadiens in points at season's end. Cleghorn had 17 goals and nine assists in 24 games, the most productive season in his 10-year NHL career; his 26 points were two better than his younger brother, Odie (short for Ogilvie), who had 21 goals and three assists.

Sprague Horace Cleghorn, a Montrealer nicknamed Peg by his legion of fans, played 98 of his 259 regular-season NHL games with the Habs from 1921-25. He saw the balance of his action with the Ottawa Senators, Toronto St. Pats and Boston Bruins, after playing six seasons with the pre-NHL Montreal Wanderers of the National Hockey Association.

Cleghorn was a hulk in his day, 190 pounds on his 5-foot-10 frame, and perhaps hockey's first rushing defenceman. He also was the most feared player of his generation, not exactly a genteel product of his schooling at Westmount Academy; his flagrantly high stick and ugly demeanour were an exclamation mark for his explosive temper, often used in defence of Odie, a hardrock who needed no help.

Cleghorn, Slap Shot's three Hanson Brothers rolled into one, lived to torture the Senators, for whom he once won the Stanley Cup. In consecutive games in 1922, he attacked Frank Boucher and goalie Clint Benedict.

Then that Feb. 1 in Ottawa, he fractured Frank Nighbor's arm with a slash, carved Eddie Gerard for a zipper of stitches and split open Cy Denneny's face, driving him head first into the boards.

"If some of the goons with long hair I see in modern-day hockey ever met Cleghorn, he'd shave them to the skull," former opponent and NHL president Red Dutton much later told writer Trent Frayne. "You never wanted to fall in front of Sprague, because he'd kick your (family jewels) off."

Souray's 10 minutes in penalties against the Senators this season would have been one dull period's work for Cleghorn. Indeed, Montreal's police chief of the day was asked - but declined - to arrest Cleghorn after a repulsive incident against Ottawa's Lionel Hitchman in the first game of the 1923 semifinal.

The Hitchman affair on March 7, 1923 at Montreal's Mount Royal Arena was the most inglorious of Cleghorn's career, a brutal butt-end to the temple that concussed his opponent.

Earlier, Ottawa's Denneny had been clubbed over the head by Canadiens defenceman Billy Coutu, who drew a match penalty from referee Lou Marsh.

"It's all Marsh's fault," Cleghorn told the Montreal Herald. "His refereeing is enough to drive anyone crazy. Hitchman went after me as soon as he got on the ice, and I retaliated. Hitchman got no penalty, I get the gate and am made the goat. No one will be a hero at my expense."

But Canadiens coach Leo Dandurand was so disgusted by the violent acts that he suspended Cleghorn and Coutu for the second game of the total-goals semifinal, and fined each $200. He was unmoved when his team passed the hat, prepared to pay the fines themselves.

The weakened Canadiens' 2-1 win in Ottawa two nights later wasn't enough to overcome their 2-0 loss at home.

The Senators went west to play Vancouver and Edmonton, against whom they'd finally win the 1923 Stanley Cup.

The following March in Ottawa, soon to win his third and final career Stanley Cup, Cleghorn destroyed Buck Boucher's knee and butt-ended Hitchman in the eye. A horrified spectator included the Governor-General's wife, Lady Byng, who a year later would donate a trophy to be awarded to the NHL's most gentlemanly player.

Never did it go to Cleghorn, who boasted of his "50 or more stretcher-case brawls."

But through it all, he could score, and in 1921-22 he was the most productive Canadien of all, a distinction fellow defenceman Souray is chasing 85 years later.

Cleghorn was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1958. He was 66 two years earlier when he was struck by a car in Montreal, the injuries taking his life a month later at St. Luc Hospital.

Hours before Sprague's funeral, Odie Cleghorn was found dead in his bed. Heart failure, the coroner said, but those who knew the brothers said Odie succumbed to a broken heart.

Tears were shed, and they weren't, when Sprague Cleghorn was buried in Mount Royal Cemetery.

Rest In Peace, Great Uncles!