PART II, Chapter 10 December 9, 1930

What was going on with Busher Jackson and Vic Desjardins?

Harvey “Busher” Jackson Vic Desjardins

As interesting as it always was to see Clancy and Morenz compete against each other, a feature of Morenz’s game was that he often appeared at his most brilliant in the closing minutes of the action. Some believed he was able to discover residual physical resources to shine most brightly at the end of a game. This was particularly notable when an outcome remained in doubt.

That perceived phenomenon may be explained simply by the fact that he maintained a superior physical capacity for performance while his opponents became progressively slower, and more ragged, as the clock wound down. He may have simply appeared fresher and more brilliant by comparison with his opponents.

Player fatigue can be a function of workload.  The first variable in the distribution of workload is the size of the group sharing the load. Another factor is the duration of work demand on a particular player: not just the length of the demands on the players, but whether those demands are interspersed with rest – and the length of the rest. Finally, player fatigue will in part be a function of a player’s capacity to manage or respond to the level of demand imposed by an opponent, or required by the style of play directed by the player’s own coaching staff.

Even into the later 1970s it was thought that all of those factors relating to the performance stamina of hockey players could be managed, and that there was rarely any realistic risk of overworking a hockey player. Joe Taylor, author of   Lloyd Percival’s Total Conditioning for Hockey; Fitzhenry & Whiteside (Toronto:1978), at pp.25 – 26, wrote:

As the game continues, fatigue products are produced by your body’s combustion system – like the exhaust of an automobile engine.  . . .  You begin to slow down, skills diminish and you find it more and more difficult to make yourself work hard. You have reached a degree of fatigue that coaches are fond of saying “separates the men from the boys.”            Eventually it becomes physically impossible to keep moving. Hockey players, however, almost never reach the stage where fatigue can cause blackout or physical collapse . . .

Two games early in the 1930 – 1931 season suggest that the coaching sciences of game roster management, optimal shift length expectations, and overall load management for specific players were still quite primitive. As a result, defending against Morenz really could push opponents to exhaustion, and also put their health in danger.

It happened in the game against the Leafs at the Forum on December 9, 2025, in part because Conn Smythe and Art Duncan showed up for a game with 10 players – 9 skaters and a goalie. Two of his skaters were late additions (Herbert Hamel and Roger Jenkins) who were then not used at all. That meant the Leafs had tried to play the Canadiens with 7 skaters and a goalie.

King Clancy and his Leaf teammates had held a 1 – 0 lead into the third period. One could say that they did well, ultimately losing only by a goal. But they did lose, and the game’s demands on the young and extremely talented Harvey Jackson caused him to collapse in the process.

The Canadiens had dressed 14 players. Although Nick Wasnie dressed, he “wasn’t used”: The Montreal Daily Star, December 10, 1930, p.26, c.1. That allowed Cec Hart to roll twelve skaters through regular shifts. Howie Morenz and the Canadiens finally warmed to their task in the third period. The Canadiens’ faster skating put increasing pressure on the Leafs. When Baldy Cotton took his second penalty, Pit Lepine scored a power play goal to tie the game.

The Canadiens’ attack continued to surge, eventually pouring 17 third period shots at Leaf goalie, Benny Grant. While Grant was perhaps playing the best game (and period) of his career, the rest of the Leafs were becoming more ragged with each passing minute. It was then, with the game in the balance, that Harvey Jackson collapsed.

Jackson was checked hard into the boards by Bert McCaffrey. When they separated, Jackson turned to follow the play but fell flat to the ice instead, “knocked out through sheer exhaustion”: (The Gazette, December 10, 1930, p.20, c.1, 3). The Globe, (December 10, 1930, p.8, c.1) reported that McCaffrey’s hit had “knocked out” Jackson – a view supported by La presse (10 decembre 1930, p.24, c.1).

Jackson’s collapse might have been a curiosity, easily blamed on Smythe’s parsimonious ways, or Bert McCaffrey’s hit. But ten days later, the Canadiens were again playing at home, this time against the Hawks. Unlike the Leafs, the Hawks dressed the league maximum 15 players every game – which meant 14 skaters and a goaltender. The Hawks even brought more players than they needed on road trips. That allowed the Hawks to match the best fits from the healthy availables from their roster against whatever their opponents were likely to offer. The Hawks had the luxury of choice, and the luxury of being able to manage the work loads of each member of their team.

However, the very same thing happened as had happened in the Leaf game. A player assigned to the task of defending against Morenz was driven to the point of collapse by the third period.

The Canadiens and Hawks had been in a scoreless draw from the opening drop of the puck until late in the third period. Each team had had good chances: The Hawks had assigned two players to cover Morenz. One of them was centreman Vic Desjardins. Now in the third period, there was a final push by Morenz and Joliat:

With four minutes to go, Morenz and Joliat, Les Canadiens’ great marksmen, made futile attempts to tally.(Chicago Daily Tribune, December 19, 1930, p.29, c.8)

Vic Desjardins, an NHL rookie centreman, had been assigned by the Hawks to  shadow Morenz. Desjardins had been prominent in the defensive effort, but now, with about three minutes to go, was observed drifting towards the Chicago bench:

The frantic defensive efforts of the Chicago Black Hawks last night almost brought permanent injury to one of their players. So exhaustive was the pace set by Canadiens that Vic Desjardins, swarthy sub centre of the visitors, collapsed in his dressing period [sic] just as the third period ended. The task of stopping the weaving, speeding attacks fell heavily on Desjardins in the third session and there was about three minutes to go when he was substituted. He skated over to his bench painfully and then retired to his dressing room.(The Gazette, December 19, 1930, p.20, c.3).The frantic defensive efforts of the Chicago Black Hawks last night almost brought permanent injury to one of their players. So exhaustive was the pace set by Canadiens that Vic Desjardins, swarthy sub centre of the visitors, collapsed in his dressing period [sic] just as the third period ended. The task of stopping the weaving, speeding attacks fell heavily on Desjardins in the third session and there was about three minutes to go when he was substituted. He skated over to his bench painfully and then retired to his dressing room.(The Gazette, December 19, 1930, p.20, c.3).

Desjardins had stopped being aware of the Forum crowd, his coach, his teammates, and even the game. For several minutes Desjardins’ state of health was uncertain, but the cause of his exhaustion was not:

Le franco-americain se surpassa si bien pour surveiller le rapide centre du Canadien qu’il tomba sans connaissance après la partie. Pendant quelques minutes, l’etat de Desjardins inspira des craintes mais heureusement, qu’il revint a lui sous les soins empresses du docteur Corrigan du Canadien. (La presse, 19 decembre 1930, p.34, c.4)

See also: La presse, 19 decembre 1930, p.34, c.3; The Gazette, December 19, 1930, p.20, c.3.

There was a sense in both cases (Jackson and Desjardins) that these individual players had been over-used: The Montreal Daily Star, December 19, 1930, p.44, c.2.

One of the Forum ushers, former lacrosse star Albert Hinton, took a different view – an athlete’s view. He felt based on the look of the Hawks when they arrived on the ice before the game had even started that they had been “overtrained”: The Montreal Daily Star, December 19, 1930, p.42, c.2.

The idea of managing player workloads was in its infancy. Too often players were simply played until their physical resources were so diminished or compromised that they became useless. It was an approach to the use of hockey players, particularly in an environment of few jobs and fewer owners, where players were given little choice about continuing to play, or not. To be ready to play was regarded not only as an expected virtue, but also a necessity to maintain employment.

It was nearly two decades after Joe Taylor’s comments in Lloyd Percival’s Total Conditioning for Hockey; Fitzhenry & Whiteside (Toronto:1978), that stories about players being expected to play through crippling injuries, perhaps more often career-threatening injuries, and sometimes in defiance of independent medical advice, began to receive overdue public attention: e.g., “The Walking Wounded,” being Chapter 4 of Russ Conway’s Game Misconduct: Alan Eagleson and the Corruption of Hockey, Macfarlane Walter & Ross (Toronto:1995), at pp.57 – 87; and David Cruise and Alison Griffiths; Net Worth: Exploding the Myths of Pro Hockey; Viking (Toronto:`1991), for example at pages 146  – 149 about Bob Baun.

Regarding players as temporary, exhaustible, and always replaceable assets on a team was already an established practice among NHL team management in the era of Howie Morenz and King Clancy. Vic Desjardins’ NHL career would last less than a hundred games (this season with Chicago, the next with the New York Rangers). The more talented “Busher” Jackson would play with the Leafs, Rangers, and Bruins into the years of the second world war, but conclude ignominiously with an unsavoury reputation for uncontrollable alcohol abuse and family violence. It was a reputation which Jackson’s former “owner” Conn Smythe would also use to keep Jackson out of the Hockey Hall of Fame for years: McParland, Kelly; The Lives of Conn Smythe, Fenn/McClellnd & Stewart Ltd. (Toronto:2011), at pp.311 – 312, 323.

It is worth more than a question to consider whether NHL management intentionally ignored, or was naively ignorant, of where the reasonable limits on the athletic capacity of players was. Either way, it was the athlete who bore both the immediate and long-term consequences.