YORKTON - The arrival of the Kraken in the NHL of course created a buzz, but they of course were not the first pro team to garner headlines in Seattle.
Near forgotten by most now, The 1917 Stanley Cup finals were contested by the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) champion Seattle Metropolitans and the National Hockey Association (NHA) and Stanley Cup defending champion Montreal Canadiens.
The ‘Mets’ would defeat Montreal three games to one in a best-of-five-game series to become the first team from the United States to win the Cup.
It is the story author Kevin Ticen brings to life in When It Mattered Most: The Forgotten Story of America’s First Stanley Cup, and the War to End All Wars.
Ticen told Yorkton This Week in a recent interview that the story he ended up chronicling was one he initially knew nothing about.
“I had no idea Seattle had a professional team in the early teens,” he said.
But Ticen ended up helping organize events around the anniversary of the win.
“The reception was significantly better than we thought it would be,” he said.
Next came a visit by the Stanley Cup to Seattle.
“We brought the Cup out and it was nuts. It was amazing,” said Ticen.
The interest in the historic team fired Ticen’s interest in penning a book – even though he had not previously been ‘a writer’.
“By this point I was seeing how cool the story was,” he said.
Initially Ticen had sought to find another writer for the project but when that effort seemed to stall he said his wife suggested “just write the story”, and he ultimately took up the challenge.
Released back in 2019, the book has now gone through a second printing – a hardcover edition – with added appendixes and detailed citation regarding the material.
Ticen said he felt detailing the source material was important to the project.
“It gives it a little bit more creditability,” he said.
Ticen said he might have started out researching a hockey book, but after continually seeing newspaper headlines around the lead up and into the war years, he realized there was a larger, interconnected story.
That might sound like the work is scholarly in nature – and it will almost certainly be a research reference on the subject moving forward – but it doesn’t read as one. Ticen manages to blend the hockey with the history of the era into a solid read. It should be a book which appeals to fans of hockey history in particular, and those interested in Seattle-area history, and beyond.
“This is the inspiring story of the first American team to win the Stanley Cup, with six new chapters on their pursuit to become one of sports’ first dynasties,” details www.clydehillpublishing.com.
“In the winter of 1917, as Europe spiralled rapidly out of control and pulled the U.S. into the greatest conflict the world had ever seen, a talented band of athletes in the Pacific Northwest fought to turn themselves into an elite team. That elite team would battle the looming war, their own insecurities, and fierce opponents on both coasts of Canada to captivate a community and journey toward hockey immortality.
“When It Mattered Most breathes life into the humanity and times of a remarkable team during a monumental three-and-a-half-year period of world history, inspiring readers with a never-before-seen look into the evolution of Hall of Fame players, an improbable championship team, a war largely overshadowed by its second incarnation, and the twentieth centuries’ deadliest scourge - the Spanish Flu pandemic.”
While sport histories – especially ones where interviews with participants are not possible – can be rather ‘dry’, forced to rely to heavily on sports page stats, but here Ticen weaves front page news into the story, giving it breadth and weight that a reader will greatly appreciate.
This is more than a sport history, and it is the ‘bigger’ story that makes it one to search out for a summer read.
