Hainsworth made NHL debut 100 years ago, remembered for precision in goal

Montreal Canadiens goaltending legend Georges Vezina liked who he saw in the Kitchener Greenshirts net, George Hainsworth turning aside shot after shot during the early 1920s Ontario Hockey Association senior league game.

Vezina turned to Canadiens coach Leo Dandurand, his companion on this impromptu scouting trip, and suggested that Hainsworth had the tools to be a good NHL goalie. 

He would offer more praise when he later played against Hainsworth in an exhibition game, the latter impressive once again, but little did Vezina know that he was anointing his own successor, Hainsworth skating into the Canadiens net for the first time 100 years ago tomorrow (Nov. 16, 1926).

Georges Vezina outside the Montreal Forum during the 1920s, and the historic Vezina Trophy displayed at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas during the 2019 NHL Awards.

The Canadiens were desperate, Vezina having died of tuberculosis the previous March 27. Their superstar goalie played just 20 minutes of a single game in 1925-26, his illness leaving him too weak to continue that Nov. 28 night, the disease ultimately taking his life four months later.

Dandurand would turn to Alphonse "Frenchy" Lacroix for four starts and Herbert Rheaume for 31 more that season, neither goalie getting the job done for a team that would finish seventh and last in the NHL.  

By then, Hainsworth had turned pro for Saskatoon in the Western Hockey League, former Canadiens star Newsy Lalonde the playing coach. Having backstopped Kitchener's Allan Cup team in 1918, winning Canada's senior championship, the goalie wound up in Saskatoon when Lalonde called Dandurand, his old boss, seeking help in net. Hainsworth was recommended and signed out of Kitchener for two years at $1,600 per season, better money than many were making in the NHL.

Goalie George Hainsworth in the mid-1920s, posing in the center of a team photo with the Saskatoon Crescents of the Western Hockey League.

The circle would be closed upon the death of Vezina, the Canadiens importing Hainsworth from Saskatoon when his contract was purchased for $5,000. His arrival in Montreal as a 31-year-old rookie came not long after the Canadiens gave the NHL the Vezina Trophy in memory of their beloved late goalie for annual presentation beginning in 1927.

For the NHL's best goals-against average, Hainsworth would win the Vezina the first three years it was awarded, from 1927-29, but his time in Montreal had a rocky start.

Canadiens fans adored the charismatic Vezina, a French-Canadian, for his flashiness between the posts. Still reeling from the team's dismal 1925-26 season and their goalie's tragic death, now they were watching Hainsworth, a Toronto native, playing surgically precise goal without flair for new coach Cecil Hart.

It didn't help that he lost his first three games, to the Boston Bruins, Ottawa Senators and the archrival Montreal Maroons.

Newspaper reports of George Hainsworth signing with the Montreal Canadiens in 1926 and his first NHL game, a 4-1 loss to the Boston Bruins.

So colorless was Hainsworth that he often felt the need to apologize, saying, "I'm sorry I can't put on a show like some of the other goalers. I can't dive on easy shots and make them look hard. I can't look excited because I'm not. I guess all I can do is stop pucks."

Where hockey writers were fawning over the flamboyance of Boston's Tiny Thompson, Chicago's Chuck Gardiner and Roy "Shrimp" Worters of the New York Americans, Hainsworth was dismissed for his stand-up, businesslike style.

He was more technically precise than anyone in net, excelling at positional play. Hainsworth didn't dive and flop and sprawl like Vezina and many of his contemporaries. Pucks would hit his CH sweater crest because he'd cut down the angle or anticipated the shot, playing much larger in goal than his 5-foot-6, 150-pound frame.

Vezina was nicknamed the Chicoutimi Cucumber for his Quebec hinterland hometown and his cool in the heat of the action. Canadiens teammate Pete Palangio, quoted in the 2002 book "Without Fear: Hockey's 50 Greatest Goaltenders," viewed Hainsworth in much the same light.

George Hainsworth's Hockey Hall of Fame plaque, having been elected posthumously in 1961, and in a late 1920s Canadiens portrait.

"(Hainsworth) was like a cucumber between the pipes. He was very cool under pressure," Palangio said. "He wasn't one of those excitable types. … He used to feel almost guilty because he didn't make flashy saves, the kind that brought the crowd out of their seats, but that was just George. He was so sound in net that he was never caught out of position."

Hainsworth carried the Canadiens to the Stanley Cup Playoffs the first three seasons without reaching the Stanley Cup Final, but fans would warm to him as his rookie season wore on. 

Their new goalie played all 44 games (28-14-2) in 1926-27 with a 1.47 goals-against average and a League-leading 14 shutouts, winning 11 straight in the final 12 games of the schedule. For his statistical excellence, he would be awarded the inaugural Vezina Trophy, his name now forever linked to the legend who had scouted him, and whose skates he was figuratively filling in hockey-mad Montreal.

He was sharper still the following season, 26-11-7 with a 1.06 GAA and 13 shutouts, then sailed through 1928-29 with a record that will never be equaled: 22 shutouts in 44 games, his GAA an absurd 0.92.

George Hainsworth was celebrated in the Montreal Canadiens Ring of Honor in 2008 as one of the team's Hall of Fame members.

Hainsworth's 22 shutouts matched the Canadiens' 22 victories, with seven losses and 15 ties. Six of their ties were 0-0 games, Montreal scoring just 71 goals -- 1.61 per game -- in a league that offered little scoring.

The shutout record was established the season before the NHL rewrote its rulebook, throwing out its ban of the forward pass. From his 43 goals allowed and 22 shutouts in 1928-29, Hainsworth surrendered 108 goals with just four shutouts in 1929-30 with the rules loosened to encourage offense.

Knocking on the door for three seasons, the Canadiens would win the Stanley Cup consecutively in 1930 and 1931, Hainsworth nearly a wall in the net.

But with the Great Depression squeezing the entertainment dollar, and with playoff losses to the New York Rangers in 1932 and 1933, Montreal was struggling at the gate.

George Hainsworth's bronze plaque at Montreal's Bell Centre, his portrait displayed behind it, and a puck from the game against the Ottawa Senators at the Montreal Forum on March 24, 1928, when Hainsworth earned his NHL-leading 26th win and 13th shutout of the season.

In Toronto, the Maple Leafs had Montreal-born goalie Lorne Chabot in uniform. The name alone was enough for the Canadiens to swing a deal with Toronto in a bid to sell tickets to francophone fans, shipping Hainsworth to his hometown in return.

"Hainsworth expresses himself as well pleased with the deal that makes him a member of the Leafs and he declares that the Toronto club will have no occasion to regret it," read an Oct. 11, 1933, wire-service report.

Hainsworth would play three strong seasons with Toronto before being released, incoming Turk Broda saying he felt that he was "replacing an institution" when he bounced the veteran.

Almost naturally, Hainsworth found his way back to his NHL roots, signing with Canadiens as a free agent for the final four games of his career Dec. 12-20, 1936. His 94 shutouts remained the League record until it was toppled by Detroit's Terry Sawchuk on Jan. 18, 1964, who had idolized Hainsworth in his youth.

George Hainsworth's 1955 Parkhurst card, and an Oct. 11, 1933, newspaper story reporting his trade to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

In 10-plus NHL seasons, Hainsworth was 246-144-74 with a 1.93 GAA. In the playoffs, he was 22-25-5 with a 1.93 GAA and eight shutouts.

With the same meticulous approach he brought to goaltending, Hainsworth moved post-retirement into business, working as an inspector for Toronto's Dominion Electrohome Industries in the radio division.

He would settle in Kitchener, Ontario, a hard-working, popular alderman who tragically was killed Oct. 9, 1950, in a highway accident south of Gravenhurst, two hours north of Toronto, when his car was struck by a panel truck. Broken ribs punctured Hainsworth's heart, killing him instantly at age 55.

He was influential in matters of the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium and its hockey programs, proud that his son, William, was a goalie for the University of Western Ontario's varsity team.

George Hainsworth pours himself a Canada Dry ginger ale in his Maple Leaf Gardens dressing room in early 1935, teammate Frank Finnigan watching beside him.

An outpouring of affection and respect was immediate, Canadiens general manager Frank Selke Sr. among those who attended the funeral in Kitchener. 

"Between 1921, when he began his pro career with Saskatoon, and 1926, when he was sold to Canadiens, George Hainsworth was the despair of some of the best marksmen the game ever produced," wrote R.M. Harrison in the Windsor Star.

"Even opposition fans cheered his great ability, courage and playing brilliance. By sight and by radio, they came to know and accept the Kitchener man as one of their own," added Ivan Miller in the Hamilton Spectator.

Wrote Milt Dunnell in the Toronto Star: "Little George, who was about as French as roast beef with mashed potatoes, was one of the most popular of Leo Dandurand's beloved Flying French(men). Leo recalled, 'During the war, I brought all the old Canadiens who were available back to the (Montreal) Forum for a charity game. When Hainsworth was introduced, I thought the fans would tear down the house. Never did I hear a player get a greater reaction than George got that night.'"

George Hainsworth in a mid-1930s Toronto publicity shot taken at Maple Leaf Gardens

Hainsworth was posthumously elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1961, he and Georges Vezina (Class of 1945) linked once more, now in the shrine.

"George was the last of the old-style stand-up netminders and one of the most nonchalant performers in the history of hockey," Maple Leafs icon Johnny Bower reflected of a fellow goalie. "He wasn't one to blow his own horn and often was overlooked when it came time to hand out recognition."

Quietly, Hainsworth set an NHL shutout record that will stand forever and won the Vezina Trophy, one of the game's most storied awards, the first three years it was presented. A century ago on Nov. 16, the mighty mite shrugged off a 4-1 loss to the Bruins in his maiden game and set off down a road that would take him to hockey immortality.

"I have three of those Vezina replicas in my attic," Hainsworth told the Star's Dunnell seven months before his death. "There was no cash award when I won them. Leo Dandurand of the Canadiens told me the actual value of the replica was $60. So after I'd won it once, I suggested that if I won it again, he give me the $60 for each time and put a little shield on the original for those wins. Leo didn't like the idea."

Top photo: George Hainsworth with the Montreal Canadiens in the late 1920s