Christmas Day NHL hockey memories as evergreen as mistletoe

It’s been more than a half-century since the NHL dropped a puck on Christmas Day, but some events and memories of a very different time remain as evergreen as mistletoe.

Six games were played on Dec. 25, 1971, and not since then, by agreement between the NHL and the NHL Players’ Association, has the League played on Christmas day or night.

For those who lost their 1971 Christmas score sheets: the Boston Bruins were 5-1 home-ice winners against the Philadelphia Flyers; the Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Montreal Canadiens 4-2 in Pittsburgh; the Detroit Red Wings fell 5-3 to the Maple Leafs in Toronto; the visiting New York Rangers defeated the Minnesota North Stars 2-1; the Buffalo Sabres and St. Louis Blues tied 4-4 in St. Louis; and the California Golden Seals were 3-1 winners against the Kings in Los Angeles.

The Golden Seals’ Stan Gilbertson remains the most recent player to score a goal on Dec. 25 (in the wee hours of Dec. 26, Eastern time), gifted with an empty Kings net at 19:42 of the third period. Gilbertson also has the most recent Christmas penalty, a holding minor assessed by referee Lloyd Gilmour at 5:06 of the third period.

California Golden Seals’ Gilles Meloche (l).is the last NHL goalie to win a game on Christmas day and forward Stan Gilbertson is the last to score a goal and take a penalty on Dec. 25.

California’s Ernie Hicke and the Kings’ Jean Potvin displayed no good will toward men 2:04 after the opening face-off, the most recent with majors for dropping their gloves to fight. And let history record that Golden Seals’ Gilles Meloche is the last goalie to win a Christmas game.

Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram writer Gary Rausch wasn’t overly impressed.

“The only hockey that should be played on Christmas Day is the mechanical-game version of Canada’s national pastime,” his report began, adding that “60 lethargic minutes” were played for an announced Forum crowd of 7,251, “but many of them must have watched the game from the corridors.

“The Kings skated the first period like they’d gone back for seconds on the turkey,” Rausch continued. “Their performance in the middle stanza looked like they polished off the rest of the pumpkin pie between periods.”

The NHL played 125 times on Christmas between the 1920-21 and 1971-72 seasons, with Detroit Red Wings icon Gordie Howe playing a League-record 21 games on Dec. 25.

There’s little chance Mr. Hockey will ever be topped for that total, or have his record passed for most career Dec. 25 goals (12) and points (24). That’s eight points ahead of the 16 (10 goals, six assists) of second-ranked Frank Mahovlich, who with Toronto in his rookie season scored a hat trick with an assist on Dec. 25, 1957 -- the 13th of 14 all-time Christmas hats -- in a 5-4 home-ice win against the Canadiens.

Nor is it likely that Gilbertson, Hicke and Potvin and Meloche will be erased from the record books.

Article 16.5 (b) in the NHL/NHLPA Collective Bargaining Agreement states: “December 24, Christmas Day, and December 26 shall be off-days for all purposes, including travel, and no Club may request a Player’s consent to practice on such days for any reason, provided, however, if December 26 falls on a Saturday and the League has scheduled NHL Games on such date, December 23 may be substituted as an off-day for all purposes, including travel, instead of December 26.”

But for five decades, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were regular workdays in the NHL, the final Dec. 24 games played in 1972.

For late Canadiens legend Jean Beliveau, games in Montreal or on the road over the Christmas period created many indelible memories.

On Christmas Eve in 2011, 50 years to the day, Beliveau recalled in vivid detail the Canadiens’ 1961 overnight trip to Boston for their Christmas night game against the Bruins.

It was near midnight, the team’s train rolling through St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, south of Montreal. Beliveau was in his berth in pajamas, as usual reading a book and grazing on the sandwiches packed for him by his wife, Elise.

“Maybe they were bologna, maybe ham,” he joked.

The train slowed as it pulled through St-Jean, and Beliveau, then in his first year as captain of the Canadiens, recalled lifting the window blind to an almost magical scene.

“I will remember it always -- seeing all these people walking to the church for midnight Mass as our train headed to Boston,” he said.

Jean Beliveau with his fiancee Elise Couture in Quebec City during Christmas season of 1952, and the couple at Montreal’s Bell Centre in 2007.

The 5-2 Canadiens victory the next night would be the third of nine Christmas games Beliveau would play during his career, nearly one-third of the 25 the Canadiens played on Dec. 25 between 1919 and their most recent in 1971.

Montreal was the least busy of the so-called Original Six teams that made up the NHL between 1942-67. The Red Wings lead the list with 38 Dec. 25 games, winning 15. The Rangers, Bruins and Chicago Black Hawks are tied with 37 (winning a respective 25, 17 and 13), with the Maple Leafs having won 16 times in their 33 games.

The Canadiens might be the NHL’s most successful franchise, but they haven’t had the merriest of Christmases, winning nine, losing 14 and tying two on Dec. 25. (They had another win in 1912 in the National Hockey Association, five years before the birth of the NHL.)

Montreal Canadiens legend Jean Beliveau signs a stick for a group of boys at the Richelieu Club's Christmas party at Montreal's Botanical Gardens in 1956.

Christmas Eve brought Montreal more coal, long before a star player named Caufield, with three wins, four losses and two ties.

Four times, Montreal played back-to-back Christmas Eve and Christmas night games, putting the team on the rails from Montreal to their opponent.

The first, in 1949, saw the Canadiens tie the New York Rangers 0-0 at the Forum, goalies Bill Durnan and Chuck Rayner starring for Montreal and New York, then lose 4-2 in Detroit the following night.

The Canadiens split their other three doubleheaders: in 1955, a 4-2 home win against Detroit and a 5-1 road loss to the Rangers; in 1960, a 3-1 home win against the Black Hawks and a 4-1 road loss to the Rangers; in 1966, a 4-3 home loss to the Rangers and a 4-0 victory in Detroit.

Montreal Canadiens sniper Maurice “Rocket” Richard with Santa and a group of youngsters wearing a variety of team sweaters at Maple Leaf Gardens in the late 1950s. Richard scored one goal in his seven career Christmas games.

“Being away from home at Christmas was always tough on the morale,” said Beliveau, who was engaged to Elise Couture in Quebec City over Christmas in 1952.

The couple married the following June, four months before he joined the Canadiens full time.

“But I used to tell Elise, ‘We have a lot of good time after the hockey season, we have to make a little sacrifice somewhere.’”

Sacrifice came at the dinner table, too. Beliveau and longtime friend and teammate Dickie Moore recalled never deviating from the game-day steak, potato and vegetables, Christmas turkey or ham notwithstanding.

“Christmas was a festive time, like anybody else spent as best you could with your family, then you went and played hockey,” said the late Moore, who played in seven Dec. 25 games.

Toronto Maple Leafs goalie Turk Broda with his wife and children at home on Christmas Eve 1946; Maple Leafs goalie Johnny Bower with his family at Maple Leaf Gardens in 1959.

“It was our job and we had to do it. There wasn’t anything you could say about it.”

The Canadiens were four years old when they played their first Christmas game, their 1912-13 National Hockey Association season-opener in Toronto against a team loosely known as the Arenas. It was close, at least for 40 minutes.

Montreal’s experienced squad trailed their young hosts 3-2 as the third period began, Toronto’s seven first-game pros defending well. But 20 wild minutes later, the Canadiens were headed home with a 9-5 victory.

Eight years later, the NHL entering its fourth season, Toronto (rebranded the St. Patricks) exacted its revenge, beating the visiting Canadiens 5-4.

Montreal played Detroit and the Rangers six times each on Christmas night, five times against Chicago and four times against Toronto. They faced Boston twice and the Quebec Bulldogs and Penguins once each.

Christmas Eve has seen a wider variety of opponents -- Toronto and the Rangers twice each, and one game against the Ottawa Senators, Pittsburgh Pirates, New York Americans, Detroit and Chicago.

Toronto Maple Leafs rookie Frank Mahovlich holds three pucks for his Dec. 25, 1957 hat trick against the Montreal Canadiens. It was the 13th of 14 all-time NHL hat tricks scored on Christmas Day.

The 1971 CBA giving teams Dec. 24 and 25 off came about a century too late for the Canadiens. On Christmas Eve 1921, they played – sort of – in Ottawa, the 10-0 drubbing they absorbed at the hands of their hosts equaling their worst margin of defeat in the team’s NHL franchise history.

Montreal goalie Georges Vezina was beaten for all 10 Ottawa goals that night, and happily for the man nicknamed the “Chicoutimi Cucumber” for his Quebec hometown and coolness under fire, open-line radio didn’t yet exist lest he be basted, cooked and carved like a Christmas turkey.

Top photo: Santa Claus poses with his skates before a game between the Florida Panthers and Chicago Blackhawks on Dec. 23, 2018 at United Center in Chicago.