HOCKEY NOTES

Hap Holmes

Goal

5-10 170

b. 21 Feb 1889 Aurora, Ontario
d. 1940 Florida

Harry "Hap" Holmes was a goalie of uncommon grit. Sportswriters called him "nerveless." He played in 409 top-level hockey contests in his career with Toronto, Seattle, Detroit and Victoria. If there had been a trophy for the league's top goalie in his day, he may very well have taken half a dozen. In all, he counted 40 shutouts, adding 7 more in 48 playoff contests, and he put up a career goals-against average of 2.81 and backstopped 7 league championship squads and 4 Stanley Cup winners.

One of Holmes' most astonishing feats came when he was in the Seattle Metropolitan nets during the ill-fated 1919 finals against the Montreal Canadiens. After being shut out 7-0 in game one -- which was played under the Pacific Coast Hockey Association's seven-man rules -- the Montrealers recovered to take the next game 4-2. Seattle struck back in game three, winning 7-2. Then came game four. After a grueling, scoreless 60 minutes, the teams somehow summoned the energy in overtime to turn the game into an end-to-end affair. Holmes and Georges Vezina traded saves by the bushel, locking horns in one of the truly epic goaltending duels in hockey history. No substitutions were made for the first 15 minutes of overtime and, at the 20-minute mark, with both sides completely spent, referee Mickey Ion called the game a draw. Holmes had matched the great Vezina, save for save. The influenza epidemic of 1919 left the Stanley Cup series undecided, but Holmes would triumph over Vezina and the Canadiens six years later when he led the Victoria Cougars to a Cup title.

Holmes died in 1940 in southern Florida, but his name lives on in the Harry Holmes Memorial Trophy, an award presented every year since 1961 to the leading goaltender in the American Hockey League.

Holmes was named to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1972.

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