Johnny Bower’s AHL-record 249:51 shutout streak with the Cleveland Barons included parts of five games. From the indispensable Internet Hockey Database:
–Nov. 27, 1957, vs. Buffalo (2-2*)
–Nov. 30 vs. Hershey (1-0)
–Dec. 1 at Springfield** (2-0)
–Dec. 5 vs. Hershey (9-0)
–Dec. 7 vs. Buffalo (6-2)
They were the last five games of a nine-game unbeaten streak that helped turn the Barons’ regular season around after a slow start. They were four of his AHL-record 359 wins and three of his AHL-record 45 shutouts. (He appears not to have played in the 1958 playoffs, which maybe helps explain why Springfield beat them in seven.)
Bower won the MVP that season for the third year in a row, returning to the Barons after four years away, one spent with the Rangers, one spent mostly in the professional Western League, two spent mostly with the Providence Reds. He joined the Maple Leafs the next season, spent 12 seasons in Toronto and never returned to the AHL. He’s a Hall of Famer, both the kind in the old bank in Toronto and the non-basketball, online kind in Springfield.
Kevin Poulin and the Sound Tigers could be a few hours’ work away from knocking one of his marks out of the record book.
…
Apples to oranges to pears: The NHL record for consecutive shutouts is six, by the Ottawa Senators’ Alec Connell, who went 461:29 without allowing a goal, per the NHL Guide and Record Book. If the name doesn’t sound familiar, it’s probably because the streak began this month… 84 years ago***. You probably have a better shot at remembering Brian Boucher’s notching five in a row in (when else) 2003-04, the longest under anything resembling modern rules, a 332:01 stretch.
….
By the way, I skipped the best, of-its-era part, though if you know much about the Johnny Bower story, you can probably guess.
When Johnny Bower recorded those three consecutive shutouts, before moving on to establish himself as a Hall-of-Fame NHLer?
He was 32.
*-Remember ties?
**-That’s a pretty good overnight haul now, let alone in 1957. I wonder what the best route was. You don’t quite yet have the Connecticut Turnpike, for instance, which is the way Google Maps sends you (at least right now). Unless maybe you could do it semi-easily by train back then? Edit: Jason Chaimovitch points out that the Hershey game was in Cleveland, which is more of a haul but probably means “train.” I still wonder what the Hershey-Springfield route would be, but… Meanwhile, I shouldn’t do this at 5 a.m.
***-The NHL Guide notes, for both Connell’s streak and George Hainsworth’s runner-up streak the next year, that “forward passing (was) not permitted in attacking zones****” at that time. Heck, they’d just allowed it in the other two zones. Connell’s streak included three consecutive 70-minute scoreless ties*****, for crying out loud.
****-Reading up on the rules changes in the guide, an interesting idea: In 1928-29, the year of Hainsworth’s streak, a player could receive a pass from the neutral zone into the offensive zone, as long as he was in the neutral zone when the pass was made — kind of sounds along the lines of the soccer rule. There were all kinds of tweaks to that rule over the next two or three seasons, including, apparently, one in-season just before Christmas 1929, because they had opened the game up too much.
****-Makes you wonder what the heck was going on in that Jan. 26 game, no? Though the Black Hawks had a few of those.
Uh, what time is it?