Frank McGee (ice hockey)

Francis Clarence McGee (November 4, 1882 – September 16, 1916) was a Canadian ice hockey player for the Ottawa Hockey Club (also known as the Silver Seven) between 1903 and 1906. He played both as a centre and as a rover. He was also a civil servant for the Government of Canada and a lieutenant in the Canadian Army.

A member of a prominent family in Ottawa, McGee was known as "One-Eyed" Frank McGee due to being blind in one eye, the result of an injury from a hockey game when he was young. After missing two years due to the injury, he joined the senior Ottawa team in 1903, and played for them until 1906. A legendary player of his era, and known as a prolific scorer, McGee once scored 14 goals in a Stanley Cup game and scored five goals or more in a game eight other times. Despite a brief senior career — only 45 games over four seasons — he helped Ottawa win and retain the Stanley Cup as Canadian champions during this time (1903–1906).

After his hockey career ended, McGee worked with the Department of Indian Affairs in the Canadian federal government. During the First World War, he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and died in battle in France in 1916. When the Hockey Hall of Fame was founded in 1945, McGee was one of the original inductees.

Personal life

Frank McGee came from a prominent Canadian family. His uncle, Thomas D'Arcy McGee, had been a Father of Confederation and had been assassinated in 1868. His father, John Joseph McGee, was clerk of the Privy Council (considered the top civil servant position).

McGee was born on November 4, 1882, in Ottawa. He was one of nine children born to John Joseph McGee and Elizabeth Helen McGee (née Crotty). Frank had five brothers: Charles Edward, James(Jim), John Joseph, Thomas D'Arcy, and Walter; and three sisters: Kathleen Gertrude, Lillisan and Mary. Charles previously served in the Boer War and, like Frank, died in the First World War. Walter also served in the First World War, and was awarded the Military Cross for his efforts.

He had a passion for sports; participating in ice hockey, lacrosse, rowing, and rugby football. McGee played half-back for the Ottawa City rugby team, which won the Canadian championship in 1898. He later played quarterback for the team before quitting football in 1900. According to his nephew, also named Frank McGee, he was an all-round athlete "rowing in the spring, lacrosse in the summer, football in the fall, and hockey in the winter." His brother Jim was also a noted athlete in rugby football and ice hockey, playing the latter with Frank in the 1903–04 season before dying in a horse-riding accident in May 1904.

After finishing his schooling in Ottawa, McGee joined the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs. He later took up a role in the Department of the Interior. His promotion within the Department led to a brief retirement in 1904 from playing ice hockey. Historian Paul Kitchen has suggested that McGee's rise in the civil service was aided in part due to the connections both of his father John and of William Foran, a hockey executive who also worked at the Board of Civil Service Examiners, the body that reviewed government promotions.

Hockey career

McGee first came to attention for his hockey ability during the 1899–00 season. He split the season with the Ottawa Aberdeens, who won the Quebec intermediate championship, and the Ottawa CPR team, who won the Canadian Railway Hockey Union championship. During the season, on March 21, 1900, McGee lost use of his left eye during an amateur game for a local Canadian Pacific Railway team when a "lifted puck" struck him in the eye. Unable to see out of the eye, he sat out the next two seasons, and instead worked as a referee.

McGee missed playing the sport though, and by 1903 decided to return to play, despite risking permanent blindness. Highly sought after, he joined the Ottawa Hockey Club, who played in the senior Canadian Amateur Hockey League. McGee was the youngest member of the team and stood tall, small for hockey players of the era; regardless, he excelled and was known to be strong and muscular, and was considered to have an ideal body-type for the sport. In his first game with Ottawa, McGee scored two goals and he finished the 1903 season with 14 goals in six games, second overall in the league. He also played in all four Stanley Cup challenge games, scoring a further seven goals and tying with Jack Marshall for the lead.

Ottawa resigned from the CAHL after four games during the 1904 season due to a dispute over replaying a delayed game; in those four games McGee recorded 12 goals, which placed him first on the team in scoring, and fifth overall in the league. During a Stanley Cup challenge on February 25, 1904 against the Toronto Marlboros he scored five goals in one game, setting a new record for most goals in a Cup game. He repeated the feat in a game on March 9 against the Brandon Hockey Club. Ottawa played in several Cup challenge series over the season, winning them all; McGee had 21 goals in the eight games he played during these challenges. In the off-season, McGee's brother Jim died in a horse-riding accident. Aware of the dangers of playing hockey, McGee's family wanted Frank to stop in light of Jim's death, but he decided to keep playing.

Despite offers to reconcile by the CAHL, Ottawa joined the Federal Amateur Hockey League for the 1904–05 season. After a brief retirement, McGee returned to play in six of the eight games and finished in a tie with Marshall for first overall in the league with 17 goals each. During the season Ottawa also played in five Cup challenge games, against the Dawson City Nuggets and Rat Portage Thistles.

To play in the Stanley Cup challenge series, the Nuggets travelled across Canada from the Yukon, hiking from the Yukon to the coast, taking a boat to Vancouver and a cross-country train ride to Ottawa. They were not considered a strong challenge for Ottawa, and lost the first of the two-game series 9–3, but it was notable that McGee only scored one goal in that game, prompting the Nuggets' manager to dismiss McGee's talents, reportedly saying that McGee "doesn't seem to be any great scorer". McGee responded in the second game, scoring a record 14 goals in Ottawa's 23–2 win on January 16, 1905. This included eight consecutive goals scored in less than nine minutes. The fourteen goals remains the most goals scored by a single player in a Stanley Cup hockey game. It was the most lopsided playoff game in Stanley Cup history, with Ottawa's 23 goals a record for one team. Later, it was learned that McGee was playing with a fractured wrist and he missed the first game of the series against the Thistles.

To resolve the disputes among top-level hockey in Canada, a new unified league was created in December 1905, the Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association (ECAHA), which Ottawa joined. McGee initially retired from hockey before the start of the 1906 season, but returned to the team midway through. Appearing in seven of the ten regular season games, McGee finished third in the ECAHA in scoring with 28 goals. Ottawa finished tied for first in the league with the Montreal Wanderers, setting up a two game, total-goal series for the championship and the Stanley Cup. In a hard-fought series, Montreal won 12 goals to 10, ending the Silver Seven's three-year reign. Including two other Cup challenge series played during the season, McGee had 17 goals in six challenge games. After Ottawa lost the Stanley Cup to the Wanderers, McGee retired at 23 years old. Kitchen suggests McGee's retirement was both due to family pressure and an upcoming promotion he was to receive at the Department of the Interior, which would require his full-attention.

Legacy

With a height of , McGee was slightly shorter than the average Canadian man of his era, but he was noted for being quite strong for his size. Contemporary newspaper reports of his play made note to his physical and at times rough play. Frank Patrick, a contemporary of McGee's and like him a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, described McGee: "He was even better than they say he was. He had everything – speed, stickhandling, scoring ability and was a punishing checker. He was strongly built but beautifully proportioned and he had an almost animal rhythm."

However it was goal-scoring where McGee was most prominent: during his career, McGee scored 135 goals in only 45 games (both league and challenge). Only Russell Bowie rivals his average of three goals per game. The 14 he scored against Dawson Creek was the most in a Cup challenge match. In addition, McGee scored five or more goals in eight other senior matches and his highest single-game total in regular-season play was eight on March 3, 1906, against the Montreal Hockey Club,

McGee was one of the original nine players inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame at its founding in 1945. Five years later, a poll of sports editors of Canadian newspapers selected the Silver Seven as the country's outstanding team in the first half of the 20th century. In 1966, he was inducted into the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame.

First World War

Prior to the beginning of the First World War, Frank and his brother Charles were members of the Non-Permanent Active Militia of Canada. When war broke out in August 1914, both were mobilized for active duty. It is not known definitively how McGee was allowed into the army with sight in only one eye. In his certificate of examination, the medical officer wrote that McGee could "see the required distance with either eye. "According to McGee's nephew, Frank Charles McGee, his uncle tricked the doctor. When he was asked to cover one eye and read the chart he covered his blind eye, and when required to cover the other eye he switched hands instead of eyes.

McGee joined the 43rd Regiment (Duke of Cornwall's Own Rifles) as a lieutenant in the 21st Infantry Battalion, and left for England in May 1915, and after spending the summer there was transferred to the Western Front in France on September 14, 1915. On December 17, 1915, he was wounded near Dickebusch when the armoured car he was driving was blown into a ditch by a shell explosion, injuring his knee. McGee was sent back to England on December 28 and spent several months recuperating. On July 7, 1916, McGee was medically cleared for active duty and returned to service on August 29. He was given the option to transfer to a post in Le Havre, away from the action, but chose to return to his battalion at the front, joining them on September 5, and took part in the Battle of the Somme.

McGee was killed in action on September 16, 1916, near Courcelette, France. An artillery shell landed on or beside him and he was killed instantly. He was buried where he died. His remains were not returned home. McGee was later mentioned in dispatches for actions he performed late in the morning of the day of his death. His brother Charles had previously died in action in May 1915 at the Battle of Festubert. Both of their names are inscribed on the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, along with all other Canadian soldiers killed in France with no known grave.

Career statistics

Regular season and playoffs

*Source: ''Total Hockey''

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

External links

*

Obituary, as reproduced on the Library and Archives Canada web site

{{DEFAULTSORT:McGee, Frank
1882 births
1916 deaths
Canadian Expeditionary Force officers
Canadian ice hockey centres
Canadian military personnel killed in World War I
Canadian people of Irish descent
Hockey Hall of Fame inductees
Ice hockey people from Ottawa
Military personnel from Ottawa
McGee family
Ottawa Rough Riders players
Ottawa Senators (original) players
Players of Canadian football from Ontario
Sportspeople with a vision impairment
Stanley Cup champions