WATCH: Book of unearthed photos shows NHL's 100 seasons in purest form
NICK FARIS, POSTMEDIA NETWORK
First posted: Thursday, October 05, 2017 08:44 PM EDT | Updated: Thursday, October 05, 2017 08:54 PM EDT
TORONTO — In the black-and-white negatives at the back of the book, Bill Barilko is 24 years old, the winning scorer sprawled forward on the ice; aloft on his teammates' shoulders; smiling alone in the dressing room. In the last one, his Toronto Maple Leafs jersey is torn at the forearm and shoulder, and a sweaty strand of hair curls onto his forehead, which glistens in the light.
That was April 21, 1951, the night Toronto beat the Montreal Canadiens for the Stanley Cup at Maple Leaf Gardens on Barilko's lunging goal 2:53 into overtime. Four months later, the young defenceman vanished in a friend's plane into the northern Ontario bush, his resting place for 11 years. Eventually the wreckage was found by a pilot named Ron Boyd. Barilko was buried at home, in Timmins, Ont., and memorialized in a Tragically Hip song.
There are 130 photos in A Century of NHL Memories, a new book of mostly never-before-seen images from the Hockey Hall of Fame’s archives, but few are poignant like the last three, those of Barilko's triumphant final game.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is that was the only Stanley Cup final series ever where every game went into overtime. To score in overtime in the Stanley Cup playoffs is one thing. To score the winner in the Stanley Cup final is another thing,” Phil Pritchard, the vice-president and curator of the Hall of Fame’s resource centre, said this week, shortly after the book was released.
“Bill Barilko was a youngster at the time. He’d only played half a dozen years in the National Hockey League on the Toronto Maple Leafs, and was winning Cups year after year. But that goal put him into a whole different section.”
Hockey fans who recognize Pritchard’s name probably know him for his signature look: the dark suit, white gloves and mop of blond hair he has worn to the last 22 Stanley Cup victory ceremonies in his role as the trophy’s official keeper. His duties keep him on the road 180 days out of the year. Soon after sitting down for an interview at the Hall’s artefact storage room here, he set off in his car for Pittsburgh, where the defending champion Penguins were to open the season Wednesday night against St. Louis.
The job does has a few perks: Pritchard’s standing date with the Cup has given him an intimate sightline into the last two-plus decades of hockey history. He also has at his fingertips the Hall’s entire trove of original photography — more than two million images in all, donated in batches over time, a fraction of which Pritchard and his colleagues selected for the coffee-table book to provide a glimpse into the archive during the league's 100th anniversary.
“From a fan’s point of view, we wanted them to open (the book) up and have all the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ and ‘I remember that,’ when the Original Six was happening, or the formative years, or the new teams, or the Stanley Cup moments, or milestones,” Pritchard said. “Working at the Hall, I love every photo. The ones that we didn’t pick, how we got to this selection, is what made it how unique it is.”
The book skips between eras, highlighting and juxtaposing the particular character of each. In one photo, Conn Smythe’s 1928-29 Maple Leafs perform air squats on a gravel road at training camp. In 1957, Chicago goalie Glenn Hall winds down at the Montreal Forum with a post-game cigarette. In 1988, a man holds a megaphone in darkness: the scene during Game 4 of the Cup final at the Boston Garden, where a power outage delayed an Oilers championship for two days.
A Century contains a lot of star power, from Maurice Richard bearing down on goal to Patrick Roy pioneering the butterfly. In a subtler sense, though, the stars are the photographers who chronicled the NHL from its origins, some of whom worked their way into the book beyond the credit lines. There are shots of photojournalists taking to the ice during a Leafs-Bruins melee and the first moments of a Canadiens Cup celebration. A few pages later, the legendary Turofsky brothers, Lou and Nat, are shown in a self-portrait with the Cup at the Gardens — one of 19,000 images they left to the Hall.
“Anybody who buys this book (will) see the first 100 years of the National Hockey League come to life in photos, but it also showcases all of these great photographers," Pritchard said. "People will appreciate what it takes for a photographer to capture this photo, from what Lou and Nat started way back in the ‘20s to guys today."
Another recurring name is Michael Burns Sr., a contemporary of the Turofskys in Toronto. Burns was a mainstay on the curling and horse racing scenes, but he also worked from a corner perch along the boards at the Gardens. He photographed thunderous Lou Fontinato hits, pucks whizzing by Johnny Bower’s unmasked head, and the acrobatics of referee Frank Udvari, who would occasionally climb the glass to avoid the flow of play.
Burns was there on April 21, 1951, the night the NHL season was decided in overtime. After the Cup celebration wound its way off the ice, he walked into the winning room and found Bill Barilko, 24 years old, fist curled in a proclamation of victory, alive and very, very well.
nfaris@postmedia.com
WATCH: Book of unearthed photos shows NHL's 100 seasons in purest form | WATCH |
Study suggests watching hockey could be hard on your heart
THE CANADIAN PRESS
First posted: Thursday, October 05, 2017 08:39 AM EDT | Updated: Thursday, October 05, 2017 08:47 AM EDT
TORONTO — With hockey season now underway, here’s something for fans to take to heart: a new study suggests the excitement of watching one’s favourite team, either live or on TV, can have a profound effect on the cardiovascular system, in some cases even doubling the heart rate.
The study by the Montreal Heart Institute, which monitored the heart rates of Montreal Canadiens fans during games, found that those watching on TV had an average increase of 75%, while those attending a live game saw an average spike in their heartbeats of 110%.
“Our results indicate that viewing a hockey game can be the source of an intense emotional stress, as manifested by marked increases in heart rate,” said cardiologist Dr. Paul Khairy, the study’s senior investigator.
The intensity of the stress-induced heart-rate response “does carry the potential to trigger cardiovascular events in susceptible individuals,” said Khairy. “Therefore, the results have important public health implications.”
The authors believe the study, published Thursday in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, is the first to look at the cardiovascular effects of emotional stress among fans of Canada’s national game.
But what’s also unique is how the research came about: the study was conceived, designed and in large part carried out by Khairy’s 13-year-old daughter, Leia, and her Grade 9 classmate Roxana Barin, both of whom play on an intercity soccer team that competes against other squads from Montreal and elsewhere in Quebec.
“We both play competitive sports and as we play, of course, our hearts are pumping because we’re stressed and we’re running and doing physical activity,” Leia said Wednesday from Montreal. “But then there’s our parents on the sidelines that are jumping up and down, almost going crazy.”
“When we end the game,” added 14-year-old Roxana, “our parents are like, ’Oh my God, that was so stressful.’ But you were just watching the game. So we wondered what the impact was on their hearts ... maybe their hearts are like beating so fast that it’s almost as if it was (like) physical activity.”
The girls took their idea to Khairy, who offered the support of the Montreal Heart Institute “to make sure (the study) was performed as rigorously as possible.”
Instead of having participants equipped with Fitbit wrist bands to measure their heart rate during games, Khairy suggested using a wearable cardiac monitor known as a Holter, which records a person’s heart rhythm “every second, beat by beat.” That allowed researchers to later correlate what was happening to the heart’s pumping action with what plays were happening on the ice at the time.
They recruited 20 healthy Habs fans, aged 23 to 63, and asked half to watch the regular season games at home on TV while hooked up to a Holter, and the other half to be monitored while attending a live game at the arena.
What the researchers found was that both groups experienced a rise in heart rate, but those who had seats at the game had a 10-beat per minute higher rate on average than those watching at home.
“If you look at how physical stress response is classified ... watching a game on television is associated with a heart rate response similar to a moderate physical stress, whereas live was associated with a response equivalent to a vigorous physical stress,” said Khairy.
Roxana and Leia also evaluated which elements of the game were linked to peaks in heart rates.
“And that was interesting as well because they found it wasn’t so much the outcome of the game that mattered — in terms of whether the team won or lost or even who they were playing against — but it was determined more by the high-intensity portions of the game, such as overtime periods and scoring opportunities for the supported team,” he said.
The study also looked at “fan passion scores,” a measure of the emotional attachment to a team, to see if it influenced heart rate during a game. A fan passion score is based on a questionnaire used in international soccer research that the authors adapted for hockey enthusiasts.
They found no correlation.
“That was a surprising finding ... it may be due to the fact that that was a scoring system designed and validated in soccer fans,” Khairy said. “But we suspect that perhaps that if a fan passion score was specifically designed and validated in hockey spectators that there still is the potential that it would yield different results.”
Studies of European soccer fans have found that the incidence of cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes among fans rose by 25 to 50% on the day of a game, especially when the supported team was eliminated from a major championship.
Khairy said the results of the Montreal study could be extrapolated to dedicated fans of other NHL teams, such as the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Edmonton Oilers, although he can’t say they would apply to other sports like baseball or basketball.
But he said the findings shouldn’t leave hockey fans down-hearted.
“I think the overall message here is I don’t think we should be discouraging people from enjoying life and watching (their team) ... But having said that, when we know what the risks are, then we’re better equipped to minimize those risks.”
In an accompanying editorial, Dr. David Waters of Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Dr. Stanley Nattel of the Montreal Heart Institute say that watching an exciting hockey game might trigger a cardiovascular event in certain individuals.
“At-risk patients should be warned about potential CV symptoms. They should be instructed to seek medical attention promptly if such symptoms occur (and not wait for the end of the period),” they write.
“At events where triggering might occur, appropriate precautions should be in place, including the availability of defibrillators and personnel trained in their use.”
Study suggests watching hockey could be hard on your heart | Home | Toronto Sun
NICK FARIS, POSTMEDIA NETWORK
First posted: Thursday, October 05, 2017 08:44 PM EDT | Updated: Thursday, October 05, 2017 08:54 PM EDT
TORONTO — In the black-and-white negatives at the back of the book, Bill Barilko is 24 years old, the winning scorer sprawled forward on the ice; aloft on his teammates' shoulders; smiling alone in the dressing room. In the last one, his Toronto Maple Leafs jersey is torn at the forearm and shoulder, and a sweaty strand of hair curls onto his forehead, which glistens in the light.
That was April 21, 1951, the night Toronto beat the Montreal Canadiens for the Stanley Cup at Maple Leaf Gardens on Barilko's lunging goal 2:53 into overtime. Four months later, the young defenceman vanished in a friend's plane into the northern Ontario bush, his resting place for 11 years. Eventually the wreckage was found by a pilot named Ron Boyd. Barilko was buried at home, in Timmins, Ont., and memorialized in a Tragically Hip song.
There are 130 photos in A Century of NHL Memories, a new book of mostly never-before-seen images from the Hockey Hall of Fame’s archives, but few are poignant like the last three, those of Barilko's triumphant final game.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is that was the only Stanley Cup final series ever where every game went into overtime. To score in overtime in the Stanley Cup playoffs is one thing. To score the winner in the Stanley Cup final is another thing,” Phil Pritchard, the vice-president and curator of the Hall of Fame’s resource centre, said this week, shortly after the book was released.
“Bill Barilko was a youngster at the time. He’d only played half a dozen years in the National Hockey League on the Toronto Maple Leafs, and was winning Cups year after year. But that goal put him into a whole different section.”
Hockey fans who recognize Pritchard’s name probably know him for his signature look: the dark suit, white gloves and mop of blond hair he has worn to the last 22 Stanley Cup victory ceremonies in his role as the trophy’s official keeper. His duties keep him on the road 180 days out of the year. Soon after sitting down for an interview at the Hall’s artefact storage room here, he set off in his car for Pittsburgh, where the defending champion Penguins were to open the season Wednesday night against St. Louis.
The job does has a few perks: Pritchard’s standing date with the Cup has given him an intimate sightline into the last two-plus decades of hockey history. He also has at his fingertips the Hall’s entire trove of original photography — more than two million images in all, donated in batches over time, a fraction of which Pritchard and his colleagues selected for the coffee-table book to provide a glimpse into the archive during the league's 100th anniversary.
“From a fan’s point of view, we wanted them to open (the book) up and have all the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ and ‘I remember that,’ when the Original Six was happening, or the formative years, or the new teams, or the Stanley Cup moments, or milestones,” Pritchard said. “Working at the Hall, I love every photo. The ones that we didn’t pick, how we got to this selection, is what made it how unique it is.”
The book skips between eras, highlighting and juxtaposing the particular character of each. In one photo, Conn Smythe’s 1928-29 Maple Leafs perform air squats on a gravel road at training camp. In 1957, Chicago goalie Glenn Hall winds down at the Montreal Forum with a post-game cigarette. In 1988, a man holds a megaphone in darkness: the scene during Game 4 of the Cup final at the Boston Garden, where a power outage delayed an Oilers championship for two days.
A Century contains a lot of star power, from Maurice Richard bearing down on goal to Patrick Roy pioneering the butterfly. In a subtler sense, though, the stars are the photographers who chronicled the NHL from its origins, some of whom worked their way into the book beyond the credit lines. There are shots of photojournalists taking to the ice during a Leafs-Bruins melee and the first moments of a Canadiens Cup celebration. A few pages later, the legendary Turofsky brothers, Lou and Nat, are shown in a self-portrait with the Cup at the Gardens — one of 19,000 images they left to the Hall.
“Anybody who buys this book (will) see the first 100 years of the National Hockey League come to life in photos, but it also showcases all of these great photographers," Pritchard said. "People will appreciate what it takes for a photographer to capture this photo, from what Lou and Nat started way back in the ‘20s to guys today."
Another recurring name is Michael Burns Sr., a contemporary of the Turofskys in Toronto. Burns was a mainstay on the curling and horse racing scenes, but he also worked from a corner perch along the boards at the Gardens. He photographed thunderous Lou Fontinato hits, pucks whizzing by Johnny Bower’s unmasked head, and the acrobatics of referee Frank Udvari, who would occasionally climb the glass to avoid the flow of play.
Burns was there on April 21, 1951, the night the NHL season was decided in overtime. After the Cup celebration wound its way off the ice, he walked into the winning room and found Bill Barilko, 24 years old, fist curled in a proclamation of victory, alive and very, very well.
nfaris@postmedia.com
WATCH: Book of unearthed photos shows NHL's 100 seasons in purest form | WATCH |
Study suggests watching hockey could be hard on your heart
THE CANADIAN PRESS
First posted: Thursday, October 05, 2017 08:39 AM EDT | Updated: Thursday, October 05, 2017 08:47 AM EDT
TORONTO — With hockey season now underway, here’s something for fans to take to heart: a new study suggests the excitement of watching one’s favourite team, either live or on TV, can have a profound effect on the cardiovascular system, in some cases even doubling the heart rate.
The study by the Montreal Heart Institute, which monitored the heart rates of Montreal Canadiens fans during games, found that those watching on TV had an average increase of 75%, while those attending a live game saw an average spike in their heartbeats of 110%.
“Our results indicate that viewing a hockey game can be the source of an intense emotional stress, as manifested by marked increases in heart rate,” said cardiologist Dr. Paul Khairy, the study’s senior investigator.
The intensity of the stress-induced heart-rate response “does carry the potential to trigger cardiovascular events in susceptible individuals,” said Khairy. “Therefore, the results have important public health implications.”
The authors believe the study, published Thursday in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, is the first to look at the cardiovascular effects of emotional stress among fans of Canada’s national game.
But what’s also unique is how the research came about: the study was conceived, designed and in large part carried out by Khairy’s 13-year-old daughter, Leia, and her Grade 9 classmate Roxana Barin, both of whom play on an intercity soccer team that competes against other squads from Montreal and elsewhere in Quebec.
“We both play competitive sports and as we play, of course, our hearts are pumping because we’re stressed and we’re running and doing physical activity,” Leia said Wednesday from Montreal. “But then there’s our parents on the sidelines that are jumping up and down, almost going crazy.”
“When we end the game,” added 14-year-old Roxana, “our parents are like, ’Oh my God, that was so stressful.’ But you were just watching the game. So we wondered what the impact was on their hearts ... maybe their hearts are like beating so fast that it’s almost as if it was (like) physical activity.”
The girls took their idea to Khairy, who offered the support of the Montreal Heart Institute “to make sure (the study) was performed as rigorously as possible.”
Instead of having participants equipped with Fitbit wrist bands to measure their heart rate during games, Khairy suggested using a wearable cardiac monitor known as a Holter, which records a person’s heart rhythm “every second, beat by beat.” That allowed researchers to later correlate what was happening to the heart’s pumping action with what plays were happening on the ice at the time.
They recruited 20 healthy Habs fans, aged 23 to 63, and asked half to watch the regular season games at home on TV while hooked up to a Holter, and the other half to be monitored while attending a live game at the arena.
What the researchers found was that both groups experienced a rise in heart rate, but those who had seats at the game had a 10-beat per minute higher rate on average than those watching at home.
“If you look at how physical stress response is classified ... watching a game on television is associated with a heart rate response similar to a moderate physical stress, whereas live was associated with a response equivalent to a vigorous physical stress,” said Khairy.
Roxana and Leia also evaluated which elements of the game were linked to peaks in heart rates.
“And that was interesting as well because they found it wasn’t so much the outcome of the game that mattered — in terms of whether the team won or lost or even who they were playing against — but it was determined more by the high-intensity portions of the game, such as overtime periods and scoring opportunities for the supported team,” he said.
The study also looked at “fan passion scores,” a measure of the emotional attachment to a team, to see if it influenced heart rate during a game. A fan passion score is based on a questionnaire used in international soccer research that the authors adapted for hockey enthusiasts.
They found no correlation.
“That was a surprising finding ... it may be due to the fact that that was a scoring system designed and validated in soccer fans,” Khairy said. “But we suspect that perhaps that if a fan passion score was specifically designed and validated in hockey spectators that there still is the potential that it would yield different results.”
Studies of European soccer fans have found that the incidence of cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes among fans rose by 25 to 50% on the day of a game, especially when the supported team was eliminated from a major championship.
Khairy said the results of the Montreal study could be extrapolated to dedicated fans of other NHL teams, such as the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Edmonton Oilers, although he can’t say they would apply to other sports like baseball or basketball.
But he said the findings shouldn’t leave hockey fans down-hearted.
“I think the overall message here is I don’t think we should be discouraging people from enjoying life and watching (their team) ... But having said that, when we know what the risks are, then we’re better equipped to minimize those risks.”
In an accompanying editorial, Dr. David Waters of Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Dr. Stanley Nattel of the Montreal Heart Institute say that watching an exciting hockey game might trigger a cardiovascular event in certain individuals.
“At-risk patients should be warned about potential CV symptoms. They should be instructed to seek medical attention promptly if such symptoms occur (and not wait for the end of the period),” they write.
“At events where triggering might occur, appropriate precautions should be in place, including the availability of defibrillators and personnel trained in their use.”
Study suggests watching hockey could be hard on your heart | Home | Toronto Sun
