Ross May Have Plan to Keep Pro Hockey Alive

By JERRY NASON

The Boston Globe (Boston, Massachusetts)

Hockey scribes are convinced that Art Ross at the Bruins' farewell party tonight will propose a plan for the maintenance of the sport of professional hockey beyond this season.

Smart feller. If hockey simply closes up shop now there isn't much doubt in my mind, maybe not in his, either, that professional hockey will not be easily resurrected in this town. Not on the lavish scale of the past decade, anyway. Out of sight, out of mind. Basketball, a game of vast possibilities, is lurking around just waiting for such a chance as that.

Ross is a man with an extremely agile mind. He has vision, or maybe it's intuition. Some of his manipulations have caused a storm of protest, such as the departure of Tiny Thompson, a sort of public touch-me-not, but Ross comes back with a Brimsek and over the long run he is generally right.

I don't know what he has up his sleeve, or how sound it will be in the light of sober reflection, but from evidence on hand, such as squad rosters of the National Hockey League, there appears to be no reason why pro hockey, any more than professional baseball, should close and latch the door for the duration.

Public Wants Sports

The government and the public apparently want sports. Nobody has yet said: “Looky here, boys. This stuff doesn't belong. It's trivial, inconsequential, and incidental just now. Wrap it up and store it away. We have a bigger game to play.”

Maybe that's the way it should be, but the order hasn't been handed down—yet. Until it is, it should be assumed that sports have an official blessing and a green light and should carry on, old boy, and all that sort of thing.

It chances that professional hockey is one sport the personnel of which is composed largely of Canadians, and Canada is a nation far less heeled with manpower than ours. But there is no rule in the book which says that the National Hockey League must operate with an almost exclusive Canadian personnel.

By making sacrifices in quality, professional hockey can survive in the seven cities. It wouldn't be the hip, hip, hooray hockey of the past. It would be hockey played by stars of another day, taken out of the closet and polished up, like an old loving cup. But it would be hockey. No sport can function lavishly when its manpower is diminished and a large portion of its skilled operatives are engaged in a more serious business.

Veterans and Kids

Bruins, for instance, would be reduced to veterans, kids, and maybe a few has-beens, but they'd be a team, the game would be alive, and presumably, they'd fare no better or no worse than their opposition.

On the present squad are 10 players who were married before this war started. Most of them have children, one or two. The average on the other clubs is roughly the same.

The basketball angle is one which the hockey people should not overlook, or are they likely to. Too often basketball has been sneered at as a major sport possibility hereabouts. Being no more conscious of one sport than the other, this reporter is of the opinion the temporary departure of professional hockey from Boston would provide basketball the opportunity it has been waiting for.

This town will never go hoops as long as professional hockey holds the wheel. Even the most rabid basketball people admit that much. This is a hockey town from December to April. The Bruins made it a hockey town. They started from scratch back in the Arena and gradually took over.

So professional hockey stops for the duration, we'll say. What then? Why, there's at least a dozen smart boys in this town with the money and the patience and the enthusiasm to throw basketball into the gap and build that up the same way hockey was built up.

And once it's in, and the roots take hold, and the public catches on, hockey would have a tough time getting the next dance a few years hence.

This is a big town and maybe there's room for both sports, like in New York, where basketball has been out-drawing hockey consistently. Then again, maybe there isn't enough room. But it's a gamble professional hockey might not be willing to take.

So we'll be hearing from Mr. Ross, according to our intuitive hockey writers.