6,000 fans packed arena across river in Windsor, Ontario
© Le Studio du Hockey/Hockey Hall of Fame; Detroit Free Press via newspapers.com
The New York Rangers, Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks are each celebrating their Centennial seasons in 2025-26 with special jerseys and nights throughout the season. To mark the special seasons for each of the three teams, NHL.com columnist Dave Stubbs is taking a look at each team’s first NHL game. Here, a look at the Red Wings’ — then the Cougars — first game against the Boston Bruins on Nov. 18, 1926:
The splashy advertisement in the Nov. 11, 1926, edition of the Detroit Free Press trumpeted the arrival of the city’s new NHL entry, players arriving from the Victoria Cougars of the folded Western Hockey League.
“Welcome! Detroit ‘Cougars'” it announced, putting the team’s nickname in quotation marks. “Detroit’s First Year in the National Hockey League Should be a Great Success with Your Able and Experienced Big League Playing.”
It was a momentous year in the NHL with Detroit, the New York Rangers and Chicago Black Hawks all making their debuts in the 10-team League.
The Detroit Red Wings, the Motor City’s rebranding of what were the Cougars, then the Falcons, will drop the hammer into their second century on Oct. 9, facing off at Little Caesars Arena against the visiting Montreal Canadiens (7 p.m. ET, TSN2, RDS).
© Windsor Star via newspapers.com; Hockey Hall of Fame
A preview story in the Nov. 17, 1926, Windsor Star, and Detroit Cougars forward Duke Keats.
One hundred years ago this Nov. 18, the Cougars took their first strides across the Detroit River at Border Cities Arena in Windsor, Ontario, the team’s first-season home with Olympia Stadium under construction in Detroit.
The third-year Boston Bruins would spoil the opening night party, grinding out a 2-0 win on early first-period goals by Duke Keats (1:45) and (2:40), getting the puck behind last-minute Detroit goalie Herb Stuart.
Only when No. 1 Harry “Hap” Holmes fell ill shortly before the opening face-off was Stuart pushed into the net. It was one of just three games he would play that season, Holmes playing the other 41.
The Star’s Nov. 17 “Tips & Tales” biography of Holmes was a delight.
© Imperial Oil-Turofsky/Hockey Hall of Fame
Detroit Cougars’ Harry “Hap” Holmes, the franchise’s main goalie in its earliest days. Holmes was scheduled to start the team’s first game but was sidelined by illness, replaced by Herb Stuart. Holmes played 41 of his team’s 44 games that inaugural season.
“Holmes is not a spectacular performer but he’s as consistent as the day is long and seldom requires any alibi to cover up his performance,” it read. “He seems almost lazy, he’s so nonchalant about the normally exciting business of robbing forwards of goals. But ‘Hap’ is not lazy, he’s just cool-headed, knows his stuff and ‘struts it’ without the slightest ostentation.”
Typically colorful writing of the day was in mid-season form in the Nov. 19 postgame Windsor Star.
“The Boston Bruins invaded the Cougar lair twice in the first three minutes last night then sat back at the mouth of their home to cuff every Detroit assault into submission,” writer Dick Gibson typed.
The Star had been agog with anticipation in the leadup.
A capacity crowd, it exclaimed, “was assured this morning when it became known that every box in the rink and every low-priced ticket had been gobbled up. At noon, only a few of the moderate-priced pasteboards, with some front row seats, remained.
© Le Studio du Hockey/Hockey Hall of Fame
Detroit’s Olympia Stadium in a photo likely taken during the 1930s. Located at 5920 Grand River Ave., the arena operated from 1927-28 until 1986-87.
“Despite the fact that Detroiters must pay double tax for purchases at home, practically every ducat was gone today. Standing room will probably be at a premium when Referee Smeaton drops the puck at 8:30 Thursday night.”
Canadian fans, the Star suggested, “were shocked by the prices,” tickets ranging from $1.65 near the arena rafters to $3.75 in the front rows.
Headlining the visitor’s roster were Boston captain Sprague Cleghorn and fellow defensemen Lionel Hitchman and Eddie Shore, the latter a locomotive on skates with a body more solid than a boxcar.
“Eddie doesn’t stop, look or listen when he starts on an expedition to the other fellow’ goal – he just skates past, into or over anybody that gets in the way,” the Star reported. “He’s harder to stop than a truck, packs a shot like a bullet and absorbs punishment like a sponge.”
© Imperial Oil-Turofsky/Hockey Hall of Fame
A portrait of Harry Meeking with the minor-pro International Hockey League’s 1929-30 Toronto Millionaires. Meeking played for the Detroit Cougars in their first NHL game.
The Bruins arrived in Windsor having defeated the Canadiens on home ice two nights earlier, rolling to a 4-1 victory to begin their season.
“An idea of the task that confronts the Cougars can be gained by the decisive defeat which the Bruins administered to the Canadiens,” the newspaper said in its scouting report. “The husky Montreal defense could do nothing against the all-star Boston attack.
Nor could the Flying Frenchmen make any headway on their assault against the net guarded by Charlie Stewart.”
The Cougars were born from the ashes of the Western Hockey League’s Victoria Cougars when the WHL ceased operations in April 1926. An NHL meeting awarded Detroit a franchise, its consortium of investors headed by Charles A. Hughes, and the new team, keeping the Cougars name, took shape by buying the contracts of the WHL players.
© Windsor Star via newspapers.com; Imperial Oil-Turofsky/Hockey Hall of Fame
Detroit Cougars’ Frank Foyston in one of a newspaper series of 1926-27 player profiles, and Toronto Maple Leafs’ Art Duncan during the 1928-29 season.
It was a solid roster; the Cougars had won the Stanley Cup in 1925 and advanced to the final the following year. Detroit came to know and love playing for coach Art Duncan, Hap Holmes in goal, defensemen Clem Loughlin, Slim Halderson and Hobie Kitchen, and the likes of Frank Fredrickson, Frank Foyston, Gizzy Hart, Johnny Sheppard and others up front.
Frederickson was a special curiosity for newspapermen, who noted that he was a descendant of an Icelandic family that settled in Canada and was a member of the 1920 world champion Winnipeg Falcons.
“The Detroit pivot is sometimes called the Babe Ruth of hockey on account of the tremendous speed of his shots and his general outstanding skill,” the Pittsburgh Press reported on Nov. 19 when the Cougars headed in to face the Pirates. “He combines stick-handling ability with his speed, and his shots are said to be harder than those of Babe Dye, considered the hardest shooter in the league.”
Opening night for the Cougars in Windsor was a grand occasion for the 6,000 who packed Border Cities Arena.
© Le Studio du Hockey
The 1925-26 Boston Bruins at Boston. Front row, from left: trainer Thomas Murray, John Brackenborough, Norm Shay, Charles Stewart, Carson Cooper, George Redding. Back row: owner Charles Adams, Gerry Geran, Lionel Hitchman, Stan Jackson, Jimmy Herbert, Red Stuart, Herb Mitchell, coach/manager Art Ross.
“Detroit anticipates the enjoyment of many thrills and pleasures during her first hockey season which opens tonight,” read the J.L. Hudson Co. advertisement in the Free Press, which included the team’s 15-man roster, its 44-game schedule and a small biography of Duncan.
“A word of appreciation is also due the hundred or more Detroit men through whose efforts and financial support the Detroit Hockey Club was promoted. Not only have they stimulated new interest and appreciation for a most colorful and exhilarating sport, but their project is bringing about an important civic improvement in the erection of a great arena, the Olympia, now under construction at McGraw and Grand River Avenues.”
A target date of mid-February 1927 was set for Olympia Stadium’s gala opening, the Cougars expected to play the final dozen to 14 games of the schedule in their magnificent 15,000-seat arena.
In the end, they wouldn’t move into the building until the start of their second season.
© NHL
The official NHL scoresheet from the Detroit Cougars’ first game, a 2-0 loss to the Boston Bruins at Border Cities Arena in Windsor, Ontario.
As the Olympia rose, fans in Windsor embraced the Cougars as though the fledgling franchise was its own.
“Canadians: We are Greatly Indebted to You!” another J.L. Hudson ad proclaimed. “Hockey – the foremost sport of Canadians – has captured the United States. Detroit is proud to have gained admittance to the National Hockey League. We acknowledge our indebtedness to Border Cities’ residents particularly for having aroused and stimulated our interest in hockey.”
The Cougars would wind up going 12-28-4 in their maiden season, finishing fifth and last in the American Division. The Bruins (21-20-3) finished second, behind the Rangers, defeating the Black Hawks then the Rangers to advance to the Stanley Cup Final. They would fall to the Senators in the championship round, Ottawa winning two and tying two.
Top photo: The Stanley Cup in its original bowl and collar form during the 1926-27 NHL season, the first year that only NHL teams competed for the trophy. At right, an advertisement in the Detroit Free Press of Nov. 17, 1926, for the following night’s Detroit-Boston game, to be played at the Border Cities Arena in Windsor, Ontario.
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