Clancy, King

Frank Clancy was born in Ottawa in 1903 and since childhood has been playing hockey at open city ice rinks. He received one of his first pairs of skates as a gift from Eddie Gerard , a hockey player who played for the Ottawa Senators club and his father’s friend from 1917 to 1923. Frank himself played in the Ottawa Youth League for the national team of St. Joseph’s school, and later joined the St. Bridget sports club, playing in the adult city league. In 1919, Clancy became the champion of Ottawa with this team ^[2] .

Ottawa Senators coach Pete Green drew attention to Clancy’s game as part of St Bridget’s, and in 1921 the Senators signed a $ 800 contract with a young defender. At this time, Clancy, still not having time to get the nickname "King" (King), weighed only 150 pounds ( 68 kg ); he became the youngest player in the NHL at that time. Clancy, who scored his first goal in the NHL during the extra time of his debut match against Hamilton Tigers ^[2] , became a regular player after the club left Eddie Gerard ^[3] .

Clancy played for the Senators until the 1929/1930 season, despite the defender’s role, skillfully managing the puck in the attack ^[2] and having managed to hit the opponents' gates more than ten times in three seasons (in the 1923/1924 season he was in the top ten league scorers and giving the most assists ^[2] ). In the seasons 1922/1923 and 1926/1927, he helped the club win the Stanley Cup ^[3] , and in 1922 lost with the team in the final ^[2] .

In 1930, Clancy became the central figure of an unprecedented transaction by the time between the Senators and the Toronto Maple Leafs . The Maple Leaves were given to the Ottawa club for one player of two - Eric Pettinger and Art Smith - and added $ 35,000 from the top (about half of this money, the owner of Toronto Conn Smith won at the races shortly before). This risk paid off: already in his first season with the club, Clancy helped him score 13 points more than in the previous one, and he himself got into the first NHL team. A year later, in the 1931/1932 season , the Toronto team with the participation of Clancy won the Stanley Cup for the first time in their history. In the 1932/1933 and 1933/1934 seasons, Clancy scored 25 and 28 points in the “goal plus pass” system, respectively, in the second season, he got into the first team of all NHL stars for the second time. However, then its effectiveness fell, he gained extra weight and at the beginning of the 1936/1937 season announced the end of his playing career ^[2] .

In the 1937/1938 season, Clancy was invited to the post of coach of the NHL club Montreal Maroons , but was fired after the first 18 games of the season (6 wins with 11 losses and one draw). After that, he worked for 11 years in the NHL as an arbiter, then accepting the offer to become a coach of the Cincinnati Mohox club, a subsidiary of the Montreal Canadiens team, who played in the AHL . After two seasons finished by “Mohawks” in last place, he became a coach of the Pittsburgh Hornets AHL club, with whom he won the league’s main trophy in the 1951/1952 season ^[2] .

In 1953, Clancy became the head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, replacing Joe Primo in this position ^[2] . The team, which won the Stanley Cup four times from 1947 to 1951, after the death of its lead player Bill Barilko ^[3] , but all three seasons under the leadership of Clancy went into the playoffs, although they could not win. At the end of the 1955/1956 season, Clancy vacated the coaching post for Howie Meeker , who had recently completed his playing career, becoming deputy general manager. After several unsuccessful seasons, Maple Leaves returned to their optimal shape and again became the owners of the Stanley Cup in 1962, repeating this success three more times until the end of the 1960s, each time with Punch Imlah as head coach. Clancy remained deputy general manager of the club until his death in 1986 ^[2] , since 1969 he was also vice president of Maple Leafs ^[4] . He was a personal friend of the new owner of the club, Harold Ballard, and in the 1971/1972 season, he temporarily acted as team head coach while John McLellan was in the hospital. At the end of his life, Clancy regularly acted as the Toronto Maple Leafs Goodwill Ambassador ^[3] .

In 1958, the name of King Clancy was included in the lists of the Hockey Hall of Fame . In his honor was named King Clancy Trophy - an annual prize awarded to one of the hockey players for public charity work ^[3] . Since 1975, Clancy has also been a member of the Canadian Hall of Fame ^[4] . In 2016, when the Toronto Maple Leafs assigned numbers to 17 players, number 7 was posthumously assigned to Clancy and Tim Horton ^[5] .

• James H. Marsh. King Clancy (neopr.) . Historica Canada (January 22, 2008). Date of treatment November 23, 2016.