Percy
LeSueur and the rest of the 1905-1906 Smiths Falls hockey team shown in
the above photograph represent the best and the brightest in the sports
history of the town of 9,000 in Eastern Ontario. They were the undefeated
champions of the Federal Amateur Hockey League (F.A.H.L.), compiling a
7-0 record against team from Montreal, Ottawa, Cornwall and Brockville.
More significantly, the team also competed for the
Stanley Cup (left) in March 1906 against the fabled Ottawa Silver Seven.
We are used to a lengthy playoff schedule stretching into June each year among numerous professional teams to determine the season's winner of the Stanley Cup. However, more than a century ago hockey was strictly an amateur game. The Stanley Cup began as a challenge trophy for amateur team in 1893. The team that held the trophy was obliged to defend it when ordered to do so by the trustees of the cup. Often this meant that the Stanley Cup was contested several times during one hockey season. For some time the challenges were two-game, total goals affairs. Following their perfect record in the Federal League, the Smiths Falls team, occasionally called the Fusiliers, issued a challenge to the most renowned hockey team of the day, the Ottawa Silver Seven, soon to be named the Ottawa 
Senators. The challenge was accepted by the trustees of the Stanley Cup, and the working-class town of Smiths Falls, where most of the labour forced worked on the Canadian Pacific Railroad or manufactured agricultural implemnents in the Frost and Wood factory, competed for the highest athletic prize in Canada. The two games were played on Tuesday, March 6 and Thursday, March 8 in Dey Brothers Arena in Ottawa (right) - between 2,000 and 3,000at the first game and 5,000 and 
6,000 at the second game. A large contingent of people, estimated
at 250 fans on Tuesday and 600 on Thursday, made the trip from Smiths Falls,
a distance of approximately 45 miles.
The first game ended in a 6-5 victory for Ottawa, with the great Frank McGee scoring five times for the winners. The local Rideau Record reported that Smiths Falls |
"stunned the hockey world on Tuesday night when they met the Senior Ottawas in one of the finest exhibitions of the game ever seen in Canada.... At three different periods of the game Smiths Falls was in the lead and the foundations of the Stanley Cup shivered and shook like a stone wall charged with a stick of dynamite...Jack Fraser...was by long odds the best man on the ice...Serviss...rendered his team yeoman service, and worked well with his pal, Fraser. The Falls' forward line put it all over Ottawa for speed and stick handling, but the latter's great combination (passing) told effectively against their opponents...Armstrong, Brown and LeSueur made an almost immobile defense. LeSueur's stops were marvelous."
"LeSueur has put up many wonderful and thrilling exhibitions, but his style last night eclipsed anything seen before in the Capital,, and the best games in Canada have been played there. Round after round of applause was accorded him by the entire crowd as he brushed aside scores of shots that came streaming toward him all through the game."Percy LeSueur joined the Ottawa Silver Seven in the  middle
of thier next playoff series against the Montreal Maroons. He made
a life for himself in hockey as a player, coach, manager, referee, inventor,
arena manager, broadcaster and columnist. "Peerless
Percy, " as he was nicknamed, was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame
in 1961, shortly before his death on January 27, 1962.
... And now you know why you will find the name of Smiths Falls on the top ring of the Stanley Cup at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.
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