Following Lester Patrick's death in 1960, sports columnist Jim Coleman wrote, “Lester Patrick didn't invent hockey but no other man has ever exerted such a lengthy and generally beneficial influence on any sport.” When Lester’s younger brother, Frank, died four weeks later, another columnist claimed, “The modern rule book is a monument to Frank's invention: it still contains 22 of the rules he wrote.”

While other hockey historians credit Lester with some of the rule changes, most agree that Lester and Frank created modern hockey and founded a hockey dynasty neatly described in a chapter of Trent Frayne’s book, The Mad Men of Hockey. He wrote, “... for 15 years they organized and ran their own league, built and owned their own rinks, raided rival leagues and signed their own players, drew up their own schedules, made up their own rules, and owned, managed, coached and played on their own teams.”

It was Frank who proposed the blue lines that divide the rink into three zones, the penalty shot, a penalty for checking into the boards, the assist for helping score a goal, the numbering of players, the forward pass, and the playoff system. Others give Lester credit for allowing defencemen to rush up the ice and goaltenders to stop a puck any way they can instead of being restricted to standing, and both are given credit for establishing the Pacific Coast Hockey Association that won the Stanley Cup for such teams as the Vancouver Millionaires, the Victoria Cougars, and the Seattle Metropolitans.
 

When the goalie of the New York Rangers was injured during the final round of the 1928 Stanley Cup finals, there was no one dressed to replace him. As manager of the team, Lester Patrick put on the pads and skated to the net, assuring a Rangers' victory by stopping 18 shots until Billy Boucher won the game in over-time. Forty-four at the time of this feat, Lester Patrick was called “the greatest name in hockey history” by “Cyclone” Taylor, hockey's first superstar. [Photo, courtesy Dean and Frank Miller]

Lester was born in Drummondville, Quebec, in 1883, and Frank, in Ottawa, two years later. They were the sons of Joe Patrick, a successful lumberman who settled in Nelson, British Columbia, in 1907. By then, Lester had already established himself as an outstanding defenceman in Brandon, Manitoba, where he broke the tradition of playing only a defensive role when he rushed up the ice to score a goal. With the Montreal Wanderers in 1906, he scored the final two goals in a 12-10 total point two-game Stanley Cup victory over the Ottawa Silver Seven.

Lester stayed with the Wanderers as captain for another year and then joined his father at Nelson as did Frank. Frank had been a star defenceman with McGill University while obtaining a BA and, at age 20, he had refereed a Stanley Cup game. At Nelson the Patricks built a small covered arena and their team won the BC championship before the boys turned professional in December 1909 when mining magnet, M.J. O’Brien, bankrolled the Renfrew Millionaires. O’Brien paid Lester and Frank the unheard-of sum of $3,000 and $2,000 respectively to play 12 games in the winter of 1910. Another high-priced Millionaire player was Frank (“Cyclone”) Taylor, but, despite the high-priced talent, the Millionaires failed to win the Stanley Cup.

When Joe Patrick sold his business in 1911, the Patricks decided to launch professional hockey on the west coast. They built Canada’s first artificial ice arenas at Vancouver and Victoria and raided eastern clubs for 16 players, among them Cyclone Taylor, Newsy Lalonde, Moose Johnson, and goaltender Bert Lindsay, father of “Terrible Ted” of Detroit Red Wings fame.

Some local players were added to make a total of 23 – carefully divided among Vancouver, Victoria, and New Westminster. In Vancouver, they played in what was described as the world’s largest sports emporium, a 10,000-seat building. Here Frank not only owned, coached, and played for Vancouver but also served as president of the three-team league that played seven-man hockey until 1922 – instead of the six-man game already adopted in the east – while Lester owned, coached, and played for Victoria.
 

In its brief history, the Renfrew Millionaires (1907-1911) were arguably the best amateur hockey team ever fielded. Fifty percent of the 1908 squad of eight players fielded four future Hockey Hall of Famers: Newsy Lalonde, bottom; “Cyclone” Taylor, upper left; Frank Patrick, upper right; and Lester Patrick, center. At top is Bert Lindsay, father of “Terrible Ted”, another Hall of Famer, who skated on the same line in the 1940s and ’50s with Gordie Howe and Sid Abel of the Detroit Red Wings. [Photo, courtesy Dean and Frank Miller]

The East laughed at the three-team league until, at the end of the season, the West won two of the three all-star games by scores of 5-1 and 10-4. It was an even bigger shock in 1915 when Frank’s Vancouver Millionaires won the Stanley Cup, beating Ottawa in three straight games and, in 1917, the Seattle Metropolitans became the first U.S. city to win the Cup. Lester’s Victoria Cougars also won it in 1925.

By then Patrick’s Western league included teams in Saskatoon, Regina, Edmonton, and Calgary and had such future Hall of Fame players as George Hainsworth, Dick Irvin, Eddie Shore, Newsy Lalonde, and Bill Cook. Expansion plans in the East, however,with some owners willing “to throw money around like confetti” doomed the Western clubs that were losing money. After Saskatoon optioned itself to the Montreal Maroons, Frank, representing the three clubs they owned as well as Calgary and Edmonton, sold the teams to the Chicago, Detroit, and New York franchises for $250,000, making it possible for the Patricks almost to break even after operating the PCHA for 15 years. At the same time, Lester joined the newly established New York Rangers.

New York was a perfect match for the Ranger management. Lester not only produced a winning team but sold the game to skeptical sports editors like Ed Daley of the Herald Tribune, who created Lester’s best-known nickname when he wrote, “Yesterday, I spent a fascinating half hour in the lair of the Silver Fox.” Hall of Famer King Clancy once declared, “Lester fit the New York scene like a glove ... immaculately dressed, silver-haired, and with that elegant bearing, he oozed class and the Garden fans loved him for it.”
 

At the family home, Cyndomyr, Victoria, B.C., 1911, gather the Joseph and Grace Patrick family. From left, front row, sit Ted, Cynda, Myrtle, and Guy. At back, seated, are Lester, Dora, Stan, Grace and Joe, and Frank. Lester's two sons, Lynn and Muzz, not only played for the Rangers and became managers of NHL teams, but two of Lester's grandsons are active in the NHL today. They are Lynn's son Craig, manager of the Pittsburg Penguins and Muzz's son Richard (Dick), president and part owner of the Washington Capitals. [Photo, courtesy Dean and Frank Miller]

Fans were even more adoring after the second game of the Stanley Cup playoffs with the Maroons in 1928 when the Ranger goaltender, Lorne Chabot, stopped a shot with his left eye and had to leave the game in the second period. The Rangers had no substitute goalie and the Maroons refused to let a goaltender in the stands replace Chabot; so Lester strapped on the pads. He allowed one goal that tied the game, but the Rangers won in overtime and went on to win the Stanley Cup.

Lester spent 13 years behind the Ranger bench as, every year but one, the team made the playoffs and won another Stanley Cup in 1933. With the inauguration of all-star selections in 1930, Lester was selected as the outstanding coach seven of the first eight years but was criticized for nepotism by fans when his sons, Lynn and Muzz, first joined the team in the mid-’30s. Both had reached star status, however, when the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1940, the last time until the spring of 1995.
 

Visionary Frank Patrick's dream of a west coast hockey league was fulfilled in 1911 when he and brother Lester established the Pacific Coast Hockey Association. He not only built Canada's first artificial ice arena in Vancouver, but owned, managed, coached, and played defence for the Vancouver Millionaires leading them to the Stanley Cup in 1915. [Photo, courtesy Dean and Frank Miller]

After consummating the deal to sell the teams, Frank opted to stay in British Columbia, speculating in mining and oil claims and set up the Western (minor) Hockey League and managed the Vancouver club until turning it over to his younger brother Guy when he became managing director of the NHL in 1933. A year later, he joined the Boston Bruins as coach, returning to Vancouver in 1936. After the 1936 season he returned to Vancouver. In 1940, when Frank went to the Montreal Canadiens as top aide to Tommy Gorman, this caused Jim Coleman to write, “Frank Patrick, one of the great brains of hockey, has shouldered his way back into the game’s high society.” Over the next two years he signed such players as Elmer Lach, Kenny Reardon, and Butch Bouchard but then accepted a position with an industrial firm in Montreal in 1942 and, following the war, returned to British Columbia and semi-retirement.

Lester continued with the Rangers until December 1947. When he was feted as a retiring vice president, a New York columnist humorously observed, “It finally happened to Lester Patrick; he found himself at a loss for words.” Another wrote, “Lester Patrick, the man known as the Silver Fox and Mr. Hockey, was heaped with words of praise and with gifts, which, when all stacked together, failed by far to measure up to what he himself has contributed to the game of hockey.” The Ranger organization honoured Lester as late as 1966 when it created the Lester Patrick award, presented annually “for outstanding service to hockey in the United States.”

“The Silver Fox” and his wife, Grace, returned to Victoria where he kept in touch with many of his old cronies and helped establish the Hockey Hall of Fame, originally located in Kingston, Ontario, and now magnificently housed at Front and Yonge Streets, Toronto.

Mel James