Stanley Cup

In the first game, the Detroit Red Wings, playing on their home rink, skated rings around the Montreal Canadiens, 4-to-0. In the second, they did exactly the same thing though this time the Canadiens managed to score the first goal before losing, 5-to-1. For the third game, the teams moved to Montreal, where "Les Millionaires," the Canadiens' famed cheering club, occupies the same block of seats at all their games. A temperamental team, which in streaks this season has been the best in the game, the Canadiens suddenly recovered their touch. Johnny Gagnon put the first goal through in the first period. In the second, Detroit's goalie Norman Smith, whose arm had been temporarily numbed during a scramble in the first period, signaled for a substitute and young Jimmy Franks skated out to take his place. Franks was good but not quite good enough, after his teammates had tied the score, to turn back the shot that Babe Siebert, the Canadiens' defense man, sent in so hard that it spun the goalie around when he tried to block it. That made the score 2-to-1. The Red Wings, playing wide open hockey on the chance of catching up, lost their gamble when Gagnon scored his second goal of the game just before it ended, Canadiens 3, Red Wings, 1.

That, last week, was the start of professional hockey's most important series of games thus far this season--for the championship of the National Hockey League. The only more important series of the year will start next week, when the winner of the Canadiens-Red Wings series plays an as yet undetermined opponent three-out-of-five games in the final play-offs for the Stanley Cup.

To professional hockey, the playoffs for the Stanley Cup, battered silver trophy that has been the game's No. i prize since 1894, mean what the World Series means to professional baseball. The difference is that the playoffs achieve their point much less directly. If the Stanley Cup were awarded to the winner of the series between the two teams that led their respective divisions of the National Hockey League, the maximum number of games in the playoffs would be five. What happens instead is that all but the two worst of the league's eight teams engage in a complex round-robin of which the most noteworthy feature is that it provides for a maximum of 19 games. This scheme pleases hockey club owners, because they thereby make more money. It also pleases hockey addicts, because it gives them more chance to gratify their addiction. Last week, while the Red Wings were playing the Canadiens, two other series of Stanley Cup playoff games were going on elsewhere. In one, the New York Rangers, who finished third in the American division, beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, who finished third in the International division, twice in succession. This gave them the right to meet the Montreal Maroons, winner against the Boston Bruins in a two-out-of-three series between second-place teams. Next week, the winner of the Rangers v. Maroons series plays the winner of the first-place series. The winner of this final series gets the Stanley Cup to keep until the rigmarole begins all over again next year.

Owned by James Norris, league leaders all this season, the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup last year. When the playoffs started last week, they were favorites to retain it, although Larry Aurie, their star forward and leading scorer, broke his ankle three weeks ago. Most experts agreed that their first hurdle in the play-offs was the hardest. The Canadiens-- oldest club in organized hockey, whose full name is Club de Hockey Canadian-- have this season supplied most of the surprises in one of hockey's most surprising years.

Not present in the Canadiens' games last week was the man who did most to make them possible. He was the late Howarth ("Howie") Morenz, considered by experts the fastest skater and the greatest forward that the sport has produced, who died three weeks ago of heart failure when he was apparently recuperating normally from a leg broken in a game in January (TIME, March 15). Last year, the Canadiens finished last in their division, failed to reach the playoffs for the first time in a decade. As soon as the season was over, Owner Ernest Savard recalled Manager Cecil Hart, hockey's only Jewish manager, who after running the team in its greatest years and helping it win the Stanley Cup in 1930 and 1931, had been ousted in 1932.

Hart's first move was to recall Morenz, longtime Canadiens star, whom his successor had traded to the Chicago Black Hawks, who had traded him to the Rangers. Supposedly too old (34) to stand the pace of first-class hockey, Morenz rewarded Hart's confidence by recovering his finest form. At the same time, behind an inspired line, Babe Siebert, whom Manager Hart had got from the Boston Bruins, became the best defense man in the league. Otherwise unchanged from the team that had finished last a year ago, the Canadiens began this season by playing unbeatable hockey, kept it up until three weeks ago. When Morenz died, the Canadiens lost heart completely, went into a slump. Last week, club officials announced that Morenz's estate would receive his share of the playoff prize money.

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