Art Ross

Arthur Howey Ross was born on January 13, 1885, in Naughton, Ontario. His father, Thomas Barnston Ross, was of Scottish descent and originally from Chicoutimi, Quebec, while his mother was Marguerite (Margaret) McLeod. Ross's parents initially lived in Lake St. John, Quebec (now Lac Saint-Jean), where Thomas worked for the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). The family had ten children: nine sons and one daughter. Around 1876, Thomas was transferred to a trading post in Northern Ontario close to the Whitefish Lake. Living in a remote outpost, the family would trek each way twice a year for supplies. Ross spent his early years at the trading post and first learned to skate on the nearby lake. He grew up speaking English, and was taught French by his mother, and later in life claimed he knew Ojibwe and Montagnais. In 1892, the family moved back to Lake St. John, though Margaret left Thomas in 1895, and moved back to Ontario with her younger children. She married Peter McKenzie, who was the Chief Factor for HBC in the region (and thus Thomas's superior) in 1895. They moved again in 1896, settling in the affluent Westmount district of Montreal. Thomas also re-married, and by 1904 was living in Victoria, British Columbia, where he died in 1930. In Montreal, Ross attended Westmount Academy, and became active in a variety of sports, though he was best at hockey and Canadian football (which was still very similar to rugby football at the time). He likely first played organized hockey in the 1900–01 season, joining the Westmount Amateur Athletic Association. With this club, he first met the brothers Lester and Frank Patrick, both of whom were later inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Ross and Lester had a financially successful ticket resale business at the Montreal Arena, buying tickets for thirty-five cents and selling them for up to a dollar. ==Playing career==

1905–09 The best hockey players on their high school team, Ross and the Patrick brothers were invited to play occasional games for local league teams in Montreal. Ross first played in a senior league in 1905, joining Montreal Westmount of the Canadian Amateur Hockey League (CAHL), the top amateur league in Canada. He scored ten goals in eight games during the season. His opponents regarded him as one of the best-rushing defencemen. Most defenders at the time either shot the puck down the ice or passed to a forward; in contrast, Ross skated up the ice, taking the puck into the offensive zone. Later that year, wishing to pursue a career in banking, he moved to Brandon, Manitoba, where he joined the Brandon Wheat City Hockey Club of the Manitoba Hockey League, the senior league in the province. In 1906, his first season, he scored six goals in seven games while he recorded six goals in ten games in 1907. Around this time, the Kenora Thistles, the Manitoba League champions, wanted to strengthen their team for the Stanley Cup challenge against the Montreal Wanderers in Montreal during January 1907. They paid Ross $1,000 to play both matches, a common practice at the time, and the Thistles won the Cup. While failing to score, Ross started many plays and proved an important part of the team. Although he played for the opposing team, he received a good reception from the Montreal crowd. Ross did not play for the Thistles when the two teams played for the Cup again in March, which the Wanderers won to take back the Cup. The following year Ross moved back to Montreal. He joined the Wanderers, the team he had helped to defeat, who played in the Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association (ECAHA), the successor league to the CAHL as the premier league in the country. He scored eight goals in ten games over the two-month season that lasted from January to March. He helped the team to finish first in the ECAHA and retain the Cup in 1908 with challenges from Ottawa, Winnipeg and Toronto. The Wanderers were Cup champions throughout these challenges, so Ross became the second player to win the Cup with different teams in consecutive years, after Jack Marshall in 1901 and 1902. In January 1908, he participated in the first all-star game in sports history, a benefit for the family of former Wanderer defender Hod Stuart, who died the previous summer. Aside from his time with the Wanderers, Ross repeated his practice of playing for other teams who paid for his services in important matches. 1909–18 A new league, the Canadian Hockey Association (CHA), was formed in late November 1909. One of the teams, the All-Montreal Hockey Club, hired Ross as a playing manager, but the league only lasted until mid-January 1910 before disbanding. Ross, who scored four goals in four games in the CHA, then signed with the Haileybury Comets of the National Hockey Association (NHA), a league formed in December 1909, which proved to be the stronger replacement to the ECAHA as the highest level of hockey in Canada. He received $2,700 to play in the 1910 season, which lasted from January to March, playing twelve games for the team and finishing with six goals. Before the following season, the NHA imposed a salary cap of $5,000 per team. The players, including Ross, were unhappy as this would result in a pay decrease, and began looking to form their league without a cap. Ross wrote to the Montreal Herald, stating "all the players want is a fair deal ... The players are not trying to bulldoze the NHA, but we want to know where we get off at." The plans were abandoned when they realized all the suitable arenas would be unavailable as they were owned or leased by the NHA. Ross scored four goals in eleven games with the Wanderers, who finished fourth in the five-team league. During a match against the Quebec Bulldogs on February 25, 1911, Ross knocked out Eddie Oatman in a fight, provoking a massive brawl between the two teams, which the police had to break up. The fight helped to increase the reputation Ross had as a tough player unwilling to back down from any opponent. The following season Ross had eleven goals in nineteen games as the Wanderers improved to second in the league. Before the 1913–14 NHA season, Ross refused to sign a contract for the Wanderers, requesting a salary increase. As one of the top players on the team, the Wanderers agreed to his demands of $1,500 for the forthcoming season, in which he finished with four goals and nine points in eighteen games. The next season Ross, again concerned with his salary, began negotiating with other players in the NHA to leave their teams and form a new league that would offer higher wages. These actions resulted in his suspension in November 1914 by Emmett Quinn, president of the NHA. Ross responded by declaring himself a free agent and claiming his contract with the Wanderers was no longer valid. Consequently, although having no technical power to do so, Quinn suspended Ross from all organized hockey. The owners realized if they suspended Ross, they would also have to suspend all those he signed, hurting the league. However, Ross's actions led to his release by the Wanderers. At first he trained with the Montreal Canadiens, then joined the Ottawa Senators. To help the Senators stop the Wanderers, who were known for their speed, Ross created a new system of defence. Termed "kitty bar the door", it required three defenders to align themselves across the ice 30 feet in front of the goaltender to stop offensive rushes. This style of defence would later be used in a modified version known as the neutral zone trap, later used widely to stop opposition offensive chances. The following year Ross, who had eight goals and eight assists in twenty-one games, was the second highest-paid player on the team; his salary of $1,400 was $100 less than Frank Nighbor made. Even so, Ross left the team in 1916, returning to Montreal to look after his sporting goods store, and rejoining the Wanderers. He scored six goals and had two assists in sixteen games for the team. The Wanderers, along with the Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Arenas, Quebec Bulldogs, and Ottawa Senators dissolved the NHA and founded the National Hockey League (NHL) in November 1917. Before the start of the season, Ross was named coach of the Wanderers, in addition to playing for the team. He played in the first game in NHL history on December 19, 1917, in which the Wanderers defeated the Toronto Arenas 10–9, in Montreal; Ross earned the league's first penalty during the game and also scored his first and only NHL goal. A fire on January 2, 1918, destroyed their home, the Montreal Arena, and forced them to fold after four games. However, the NHL insisted the team continue to play, and recorded two additional scheduled matches as defaulted losses for the Wanderers, even though the matches were not played. With the Wanderers disbanded, Ross retired as a player. His NHL career yielded one goal in three games played. ==Managerial career==

1918–36 Ross began his career as a hockey coach during his playing days when at age 25 he led the McGill University Redmen to a 4–2–1 record during the 1910–11 season. In 1915, Art Ross was the Coach of The Canadian Grenadier Guards Hockey Club. Following his playing career, Ross became an NHL referee. He was hired to coach the Hamilton Tigers for the 1922–23 season, and adopted new methods in training camp that emphasized physical fitness, including work off the ice. However, the Tigers finished with a record of six wins and eighteen losses, last in the NHL for the third successive year, and Ross did not return the next season. His next coaching appointment arose from meeting Boston grocery store magnate Charles Adams during the 1924 Stanley Cup Finals. Before the 1924 season, the NHL awarded Adams an expansion team. Adams' first move was to hire Ross as vice president, general manager, coach, and scout. Adams instructed Ross to come up with a nickname portraying an untamed animal displaying speed, agility and cunning. With this in mind, Ross named the team the Boston Bruins, after the Old English word for a bear. The team's nickname went perfectly with the original colours of brown and yellow, which were the same colours of Adams' grocery chain, First National Stores. Ross utilized his many hockey connections throughout Canada and the United States to sign players. Even so, the team started poorly. Early in the first season the University of Toronto hockey team was in Boston for matches against local universities. The team's manager, Conn Smythe, who later owned and managed the Toronto Maple Leafs, said that his team could easily defeat the Bruins—Ross's team had won only two of their first fifteen NHL games. This began a feud between Smythe and Ross which lasted for over 40 years, until Ross's death; while mostly confined to newspaper reports, they refused to speak to each other at NHL Board of Governor meetings. The Bruins finished their first season with six wins in thirty games, one of the worst records in the history of the league. Several records were set throughout the season; the three home wins are tied for the second-fewest ever, and an eleven-game losing streak from December 8, 1924, until February 17, 1925, set a record for longest losing streak, surpassed in 2004 and now second longest in history. With 17 wins in 36 games the following season, the team greatly improved and finished one point out of a playoff spot. Ross signed goaltender Cecil "Tiny" Thompson in 1928, who was with a team in Minnesota, despite never watching him play; Ralph "Cooney" Weiland was also brought over from Minnesota. Ross acquired Cy Denneny from Ottawa and made him a player-assistant-coach while he assumed the role of coach and team manager. On November 20, 1928, the Bruins moved to a new arena when the Boston Garden opened. The team played the Canadiens who won the match 1–0 in front of 16,000 fans. The players signed by Ross helped the Bruins to improve quickly, and they won the Stanley Cup in 1929. Denneny retired after the Cup win, and Ross guided the team to several league records in the 1929–30 season. The team won 38 of 44 games for a .875 winning percentage, the highest in league history; the five losses tied a record for the fewest ever, and the four road losses tied a record for the second fewest. The Bruins also only finished one game in a tie, a record for the fewest ties in a season since the NHL began recording the record in 1926. In 1930–31, the Bruins again lost only one home game, which equalled their previous record. 1936–54 . Ross donated the trophy in 1947 to be awarded to the leading scorer in the NHL regular season. Ross took over an improved team. He had recently signed three players, Milt Schmidt, Bobby Bauer and Woody Dumart, who all grew up together in Kitchener, Ontario, and had them play on the same line, soon nicknamed the Kraut Line about the German heritage of all three. Though reluctant to move back to the eastern United States, Lynn was hired by Ross after he was offered a salary of $12,000. He would coach the team for the next four seasons and become the second general manager of the Bruins when Ross retired at the end of October 1954. ==Legacy==

Aside from his hockey career, Ross was interested in improving the game. Before the start of the 1927–28 season, the NHL adopted a new style of goal net created by Ross. With the back molded into a B-shape, it was better designed to catch pucks and the net was used until 1984, when a modified version was adopted. He also improved the design of the puck. Ross's design had bevel edges, which prevented it from bouncing too much, and used synthetic rubber, rather than the natural rubber previously in vogue. To help tell the red line and blue lines apart on television, Ross suggested that the red line be striped. Regarded throughout his playing career as one of the best defenders in hockey, Ross was named to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1949, selected for his playing career rather than his work as an executive. A ceremony for his induction was held before a Bruins game on December 2, 1949, where he was given his Hall of Fame scroll and a silver tray with the emblems of the six NHL teams on it. In 1984 he was posthumously awarded the Lester Patrick Trophy for service to hockey in the United States. ==Personal life==

After graduating from high school in 1903, Ross began working at Merchants Bank and occasionally played for their hockey team. When he moved to Brandon, Ross transferred to a local branch. In 1906 Ross resigned from the bank, and instead joined the Wheat City Flour Mills Company. Ross opened a sporting goods store in Montreal, Art Ross & Co. in 1908, and would run that for several decades. In 1928, he served as the traveling secretary of the Boston Braves baseball team, which was owned by Bruins owner Charles Adams. On April 14, 1915, Ross married Muriel Kay, a native of Montreal; they had two sons, Arthur, Jr. and John. During the Second World War, both sons served in the Royal Canadian Air Force. After the war Ross made his son Art the business manager for the Bruins. Ross was named coach and manager of the Boston Bruins in 1924 and moved his family to Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, after being hired. He became a naturalized American citizen on April 22, 1938. On August 5, 1964, Ross died at a nursing home in Medford, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, at the age of 79. A sister, both his sons and three grandchildren survived him. ==Career statistics==

Regular season and playoffs • Career stats from Total Hockey Coaching record • Coaching stats from Total Hockey ==Awards==

NHL • Awards from Legends of Hockey ==References==