After long wait, Kings head to Hall

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This article was published 08/08/2015 (3955 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One of Manitoba’s most decorated intermediate hockey teams will enter the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame in October, 61 years after they beat the Trail Smoke Eaters in Brandon to win the western Canadian championship.

Terry Murray, whose father Billy played on the team, was the young team mascot during the Kings’ glory days. He was instrumental in finally getting the team enshrined in the same Hall of which his dad is a member of as a player.

Murray told the six surviving team members that they would be inducted on Oct. 3, although it was bittersweet news.

“That’s the one thing they all say,” Murray said. “They all say it’s too bad because so many have passed on.”

Team captain Ron Maxwell, Johnny Love, Gus Bohunicky, Paul Allard, Laddie Hutchison and Del Murray are still alive. Love is the only one not expected to attend the ceremony in Winnipeg.

Manager Vern (Pop) Rampton, playing coach Paul Platz, goalie Reg Kachanoski, George Tamblyn, Stymie Love, Bob Rzesnoski, Billy Murray, Bob Ellison, Ev Henderson, Lorne Oman and Mac Beaton were also part of the squad.

“I’m just sorry that Reg Kachanoski, the goalie, he’s gone and Ev Henderson, my defensive partner, he’s gone,” Maxwell said. “When I look over the years, I often wonder why we never got accepted into something like that.”

Allard agreed, saying he thought the Kings were worthy of the honour.

“I was kind of excited,” he said. “Terry had done a fair amount of work on it and there were a lot of teams that we beat out for a number of years that they put in ahead of us.”

There had been previous attempts to have the team enshrined but they hadn’t been successful. Last winter, a group met to try it again.

After also looking at the 1951-52 Kings, the first Manitoba team to win the western Canadian crown, the group chose to nominate the 1953-54 team instead because there is only one living member of the older team.

There are a couple of unsolved mysteries in Murray’s efforts to track down the entire team. Nobody is certain what became of former Brandonite Pat McNeil or the backup goalie, Dave Hunt.

Hunt wasn’t well known by his teammates because the backup goalie didn’t dress.

The Kings were one of the best teams in Western Canada for several years, in no small part due to the quality of the league they played in.

The Big Six Hockey League formed for the 1949-50 and quickly became one of the top loops in Western Canada. Dauphin was Western Canadian runnerup in 1950-51 and went on to win titles in 1951-52 and 1953-54. Brandon won in 1954-55 and Pine Falls took the top prize in 1956-57.

Dauphin won five consecutive Big Six titles from 1950 to 1954, four provincial titles, three Manitoba-Saskatchewan titles, three Manitoba-Thunder Bay titles and the two western title.

The league collapsed after the 1956-57 season.

But for a while, the Kings were huge draws.

The 1953-54 team played its playoff games at the sold-out Wheat City Arena because it had artificial ice. For one of the games, a 250-car cavalcade made the trip down from Dauphin for the game.

The team, which chose Mule Train as its theme song, received a special greeting when it arrived.

“When they got to Brandon, the mayor had a donkey and they led a parade through the streets of Brandon,” Murray said. “It was something else.”

The donkey later joined the Kings in their dressing room after they won the title.

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