Stanley Cup

Tired out by the longest hockey game on record (2 hr. 44 min.3 1 to 0 against the Boston Bruins) the Toronto Maple Leafs knew they had one chance in the first game of the final series for the Stanley Cup, against the New York Rangers. That was to make enough goals in the first period to win. The Rangers guessed that if they could pile up a lead in the first period, Toronto would let the game go, take its chance on winning three of the remaining four, all to be played on their home rink. The excited Madison Square Garden crowd was throwing newspapers, programs, orange peels, cigarets, candy-wrappers on the ice when the swift pendulum that is the pattern of a close hockey game paused for a moment as Bun Cook of the Rangers scored the first goal. Cecil Dillon of the Rangers scored the second, a minute later, before the first period was three-quarters over. That settled the game. Discouraged as well as tired, the Maple Leafs played unsuccessfully defensive hockey for the next two periods. Dillon was off the ice when the Rangers scored their third goal. He made the fourth and helped score the fifth that ended the game, 5 to 1.

Dillon's two goals against Toronto, bringing his total to seven in the play-off series, set a record which was the more unusual in that he is a member of a second-string forward line that was supposed to be weak. In the preliminary series against the Montreal Canadiens and the Detroit Red Wings, he had helped eclipse the Rangers famed first-string forwards (Frank Boucher and the Cook brothers. Bill & Bun). Almost as surprising as the performance of Dillon last week was the work of the Rangers' youthful, mop-haired, talkative goaltender, Andy Aitkenhead. A recruit this year, replacing convivial John Ross Roach, he had stopped all but nine of 137 shots in five games. To defend their championship the Maple Leafs had a crack team of seasoned players. Charlie Conacher, 23-year-old forward, seemed to have ended his career three years ago when he had to have a kidney removed. He plays in a leather harness which has not prevented him from developing the hardest shot in hockey, surpassing his famed brother Lionel, defense player for the Montreal Maroons. Lean, morose goalie for the Maple Leafs is Lome Chabot, who has worn the same pair of lucky trousers in every hockey game for five years. The Maple Leafs' chief handicaps were injuries to three of their ablest men--Right-wing Bailey (dislocated shoulder), Defenseman Horner (broken hand), Center Primeau (blood poisoning in his left foot).

Refreshed by a four-day rest, heartened by a hometown crowd of 13,500, the Maple Leafs started the second game with a goal before the first period was two minutes old. That made Aitkenhead fidgety and intense, as a goalie should never be, until Ott Heller, hero of last year's play-offs for the Rangers, tied the score seven minutes later. The Rangers came out of the period a goal ahead when Bill Cook, high-scoring forward of the league, slipped through the right side of the Maple Leaf defense, feinted and slipped a backhand shot over Chabot's stick. Maple Leaf penalties gave the Rangers an opening in the next period. They failed to take advantage of it, as did the Leafs in the last period when bald-headed Ching Johnson got one of his frequent penalties for tripping. Only one more goal was scored. That was five minutes before the game ended when the Toronto forwards, massed near the Rangers' goal in a desperate attempt to tie the score, let Earl Seibert get through them with the puck, clinch the game for the Rangers, 3-to-1.

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