Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame

For further information on Ottawa sporting legends, be sure to check out the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame on the second level concourse at Scotiabank Place.

Founded in 1966, the Hall is open whenever Scotiabank Place is, and has since inducted more than 200 members, including Cyclone Taylor, Larry Robinson, Denis Potvin, Aurel Joliat, Mark Kosmos, Phil Maloney, Franklin Thomas Ahearn, Francis (Frank) Amyot, Marjorie Blackwood, Donald Booth, Sheryl Boyle, Cyril Joseph (Cy) Denneny, Francois Xavier (Frank) Boucher, and John George (Buck) Boucher.

The Ottawa 67’s

Ottawa’s junior hockey team, The Ottawa 67’s, have been part of the Ontario Hockey League since they started in 1967, Canada’s centennial year, filling the void left by the Ottawa Junior Canadiens and the Hull-Ottawa Canadiens, two teams that folded in 1963. The 67’s have appeared in the Memorial Cup tournament five times, winning twice. They have also won the J. Ross Robertson Cup three times, the Hamilton Spectator Trophy three times, and have won 12 division titles. Across the river, you can also check out Les Gatineau Olympiques (formerly the Hull Festivals)at the Robert Guertin Centre.

Ottawa Sports Bars

The most important part of any sporting event – whether it be an Ottawa Senators playoff game or Monday Night Football – is having a good place to watch it.

Here are some recommendations:

Boston Pizza:
2980 Conroy Rd.,
248-0802

Broadway Bar & Grill:
1896 Prince of Wales Dr.,
224-7004

Buffalo Charlie’s Bar & Grill:
2525 Carling Ave., 828-8988

The Carleton Tavern:
223 Armstrong St. at Parkdale, 728-4424

Don Cherry’s Sports Grill:
290 Rideau St., 241-9150

East Side Mario’s:
1200 St Laurent Blvd. at the St Laurent Shopping Centre,
747-0888

James Street Pub Company:
390 Bank St., 565-4700

Local Heroes:
1525 Bank St., 733-0808

MacLaren’s:
301 Elgin St.,236-2766

Marshy’s Bar-B-Q & Grill:
117 Centrepointe Dr. in Nepean, 224-0282;
1000 Palladium Dr., 599-0282

O’Brien’s Eatery & Pub:
1145 Heron Rd., 731-8752

The Prescott:
379 Preston St., 232-4217

The Royal Oak:
800 Hunt Club Rd., 248-1901

Sens Mile

On May 19, 2007, the Ottawa Senators beat the Buffalo Sabres in game four of the eastern conference, thus putting the Senators in the Stanley Cup finals for the first time since 1927. Minutes after the overtime game-winning goal by team captain Daniel Alfredsson – “Alfie” to locals – thousands of Ottawa fans immediately rushed outside to baptize what is now known as the “Sens Mile,” an Elgin Street fan zone similar to Calgary’s “Red Mile” or Edmonton’s Whyte Avenue. Originally waffling over the idea of the designation, Mayor Larry O’Brien speculated he would allow such a thing if (not when, I might add) the Ottawa Senators made it into the Stanley Cup finals.

Thankfully, even with an estimated crowd of some 8,000 people (somewhat inebriated and loud, but otherwise polite), there were only three arrests by 10 p.m. that night: one for assault, one for public intoxication, and another for breach of probation. You have to appreciate how so many people actually caused so few problems. I guess it helps, too, that the city police have so much experience with crowd control after years of shepherding tens of thousands of people along Parliament Hill every Canada Day.

Troubled Waters

In June 2007, a scheduled show by former Pink Floyd front man Roger Waters at Scotiabank Place was bumped four days to make room for an Ottawa Senators playoff game. How’s that for hockey devotion?

Excessive Loyalty

You can always tell an old bar from a new one by the team it promotes. The venerable Carleton Tavern, for example, is still very much a Toronto Maple Leafs bar despite the NHL’s return to Ottawa in 1992. Many other watering holes around the city, though, sport logos, banners, and flags for the “Sens.”

King Clancy: All Hail the King

Perhaps the most famous hockey player to emerge from the Ottawa region is Francis Michael “King” Clancy. As a youth, his original skates were hand-me-downs from Senators winger Eddie Gerard – a friend of Clancy’s father – and when King joined the Senators himself in 1921, not only was Gerard a teammate, but Clancy was still wearing his colleague’s old skates. Clancy debuted as the youngest player in the NHL to date (17 years old). He was a key contributor to the Senators’ 1927 Stanley Cup win – the team’s 10th Cup victory. In 1930, he was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs, where he played out the rest of his Hall of Fame career. Aside from some forays into coaching in Montreal, Clancy remained chiefly associated with the Toronto Maple Leafs for the rest of his life, as coach, and later, as an assistant to the team’s general manager.

The Ottawa Senators

Organized hockey in Ottawa arguably originated in 1890, when the Ontario Hockey Association was formed, and the Ottawa team (they were known simply as that at the time) became the first OHA champions. In 1903, the Ottawa Senators won the Stanley Cup, the first of 10 times (so far) that the trophy was awarded to an Ottawa team. For many years, hockey was played at the auditorium at the corner of O’Connor and Argyle, which opened at the start of the 1923–24 ice hockey season, but closed in 1967, to be sold to the YMCAYWCA as the site for their new high-rise building.

In 1989, Ottawa real estate developer Bruce Firestone launched his bid to revive the Ottawa Senators, a National Hockey League team that had been defunct since 1934. Firestone brought in Frank Finnigan – the last surviving member of the 1927 Stanley Cupwinning Senators – as the bid’s public face. The bid was a success and in 1992, Ottawa had its team back. But by 1993, new owner Rod Bryden was already struggling to keep the team alive, though he managed to borrow $188 million for the Senators’ arena, the Palladium, since renamed the Corel Centre, and then Scotiabank Place (1000 Palladium Dr., 599-0100), and even built off-ramps from the highway to ease arena access. Making the playoffs (or at least getting pretty close) each year, the revived Ottawa Senators are usually one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference, but to date they still haven’t managed to win back the Cup they first won in 1903.

In 1989, Ottawa real estate developer Bruce Firestone launched his bid to revive the Ottawa Senators, a National Hockey League team that had been defunct since 1934. Firestone brought in Frank Finnigan – the last surviving member of the 1927 Stanley Cupwinning Senators – as the bid’s public face. The bid was a success and in 1992, Ottawa had its team back. When the Ottawa Senators returned to the NHL in 1992, the franchise retired the number eight, which was the number of Frank Finnigan, captain of the original Senators and a local boy from Shawville, a village in Pontiac County across the river in Quebec. Unfortunately, since Finnigan had died the year before, he not only didn’t see his number retired (the first and so far only one the team has thus honoured), he never saw the resurgence of the franchise.

There’s a restaurant named Frank Finnigan’s in Scotiabank Place, festooned with photographs and memorabilia. But by 1993, new owner Rod Bryden was already struggling to keep the team alive, though he managed to borrow $188 million for the Senators’ arena, the Palladium, since renamed the Corel Centre, and then Scotiabank Place (1000 Palladium Dr., 599-0100), and even built off-ramps from the highway to ease arena access. Making the playoffs (or at least getting pretty close) each year, the revived Ottawa Senators are usually one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference, but to date they still haven’t managed to win back the Cup they first won in 1903.

Good Fans, Bad Fans

An unfortunate offshoot of “us” is “them,” and in May 2007, some visiting Buffalo Sabres fans saw the worst of us when Buffalo resident Renee Luck was attacked post-game in Ottawa by Senators fans during the Eastern Conference finals. However, it should be pointed out that she was rescued by other Senators fans. The Ottawa franchise quickly offered free tickets, travel, and accommodation to Luck after hearing about the incident, and hopefully her first visit to Ottawa won’t be the last.

The Only Place to Score

During the 2004 NHL strike, Ottawa businesswoman and nationally known sex expert Sue McGarvie spiced things up from the then-new location of her Love and Romance store – not far from the hockey arena in Kanata – with lingerie ads that said, “Why they’re still making passes in Kanata,” and “The only place to score in Kanata this season.” Under new ownership, the store still exists in three Ottawa locations as the Couples Love and Romance Store (1489E Merivale Rd., 727-5534) and as the Couples Romance Stores (F-876 Montreal Rd., 744-0540 and 1473 Richmond Rd., 820-6032).

No Respect for the Stanley Cup

Hockey’s most hallowed prized has suffered much abuse and misuse over the years – some of it involving Ottawa teams. In 1903, a member of the Cup-winning Ottawa Senators (the “Silver Seven”) decided to take the trophy home with him. When a teammate found out, a fight ensued, which somehow led to the Cup being tossed into a cemetery. Another odd event occurred two years later when the Silver Seven won it again. One of the drunken celebrants boasted he could kick the Cup across the frozen Rideau Canal (remember, this was when the Cup wasn’t much larger than a soup bowl, and rugby was a more popular sport in the Ottawa Valley). Not surprisingly, the Cup didn’t make it across the canal, and somehow got left behind as the party moved elsewhere. Fortunately, when the team returned the next morning, they found the Cup sitting on top of the ice, right where they had left it. A subsequent win by the same team in 1927 led to the Cup being left in King Clancy’s living room, where he ended up using it to hold items like letters, bills, chewing gum, and cigar butts. Fortunately (or unfortunately, if you like these sorts of stories), a representative of the Hockey Hall of Fame now accompanies the Stanley Cup wherever it goes so such incidents can be avoided in the future.

The Birthplace of the Stanley Cup

It’s appropriate that the Stanley Cup, the ultimate trophy awarded for our “national game,” originated in the nation’s capital. In 1892, at a dinner of the Ottawa Amateur Athletic Association, Lord Kilcoursie, a player on the Ottawa Rebels hockey club, delivered a message on behalf of Lord Frederick Stanley, Governor General of Canada, announcing the awarding of a trophy to the best team in Canadian hockey. (Unfortunately, since Lord Stanley returned to his native England in the midst of the 1893 season, he never witnessed a championship game nor attended a presentation of the trophy.) There’s a plaque in front of a laundromat at Gladstone Avenue and Percy Streets, the former site of Patinoire Dey’s Skating Rink, where one of the first games for the cup was played, and where the Ottawa Senators (popularly known as “the silver seven”) defeated the Montreal Victorias on March 10, 1903 to give Ottawa its first Cup title. Today, the Stanley Cup is the oldest trophy that can be won by a professional sports team in North America.