James Vantour

Hockey historian and author

Super League

“If everything pans out as expected, Western Canada will have a junior league which may well provide as many Memorial Cup winners as has the famous Ontario Junior ‘A’ League.” That was the bold forecast that followed the announcement of the formation of western Canada’s first junior “super league.”

 

The goal was to bring the Cup west – to overcome the east’s overwhelming domination of western teams in the Memorial Cup final. The “super league” began play in 1948 as the Western Junior Hockey League to replace the regional junior leagues operating in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. Uniting the stronger clubs into one league, and recruiting the most talented junior players available, would provide higher-level season-long competition for the prairie clubs and thereby better prepare them to compete with their long-established and stronger eastern counterparts.

 

The league was by far Canada’s most widespread circuit, stretching from Edmonton in northern Alberta to Regina and Moose Jaw in southern Saskatchewan. Its membership was diverse. The teams represented locations ranging in population from a city of 170,000 down to a community so small it did not attain village status until 1957. There were the renowned Regina Pats, founded in 1917 and winners of three Memorial Cups; the Lethbridge Native Sons, western Canada finalists a year earlier; and the perennially powerful Moose Jaw Canucks, boasting four successive Saskatchewan titles going into the new league’s play. Three other teams were still in their infancy: the recently revived Medicine Hat Tigers; the Calgary Buffaloes; and the Bellevue Lions, later to become the Crowsnest Coalers. In 1951-52, the league welcomed the Edmonton Oil Kings. The newly-created “composite team” replaced the city’s four-team junior league with the “cream of the crop” from the Edmonton’s talent-rich minor hockey program.

 

The WJHL provided fans with an exciting and entertaining style. The players were yet to experience the tougher, professional-style brand of hockey played in the east. In the west it was a pure form of the game: fast, wide-open, defence-be-damned, double-digit scoring. It was “pond hockey”; and they were “river skaters”. Indeed, the game wasn’t far removed from the ponds and the outdoor rinks throughout the prairies where for years youngsters had honed their skating and stickhandling skills; two of the communities in the league, Medicine Hat and Bellevue, had only installed their artificial ice plants in the fall of 1947.

 

In its eight-year life, the WJHL produced two of the most powerful junior hockey clubs ever to come out of the west. One was the Pats, the closest thing to a dynasty, capturing five league championships, and representing the west in the Memorial Cup final four times. The other was the Oil Kings. They posted a most remarkable season in 1953-54 when they skated all over their opposition to finish with a 33-3 record in league play including an unbeaten and un-tied home record. Through the regular season and playoffs they ran off 35 straight wins before taking the western Canada championship and moving on to the Memorial Cup final.

 

The league developed and showcased countless young players who went on to achieve success in senior and international play, in minor professional hockey, and in the National Hockey League. They included the greatest goaltender in the history of international competition, countless others who went on to Allan Cup success, others who achieved all-time all-star status in the minor professional ranks, and many who enjoyed lengthy and productive NHL careers and numerous Stanley Cup victories.

 

Despite its entertainment value to hockey fans in the fifties and its enormous contributions to the senior and professional games, the WJHL has not received the attention it deserves in the annals of junior hockey; it is a “forgotten league.” This is its story: the dedicated hockey men behind the scenes, the players, the great moments, the challenges, the successes – and the failures.