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With his younger brother Frank he went in 1911 to Victoria, B. C., where he introduced artificial ice plants to the Northwest, founded and promoted the professional Pacific Coast Hockey League, continued playing hockey until he was 42. In 1926 Boston, New York, Detroit and Chicago, suddenly enthusiastic about professional hockey, began looking for talent to exploit the franchises they had purchased in the National Hockey League, so the Brothers Patrick sold the cream of their players to the Eastern clubs and disbanded the league. While Brother Frank became managing director of the National Hockey League and more recently coach of the Boston Bruins, Brother Lester became the most famed of all hockey managers.
Started in 1926 as a novelty for Manhattan's new Madison Square Garden, the Rangers, under Manager Patrick, were developed into an effective machine of famed players including Frank Boucher, Bill & Bun Cook, Murray Murdoch, Ching Johnson, who won the Stanley Cup twice (1928 and 1933).
To do so in 1928 Lester Patrick himself had to perform a feat. In the first period of the second game of the playoffs, when the Ranger goalie was removed to a hospital after being struck in the eye by a whizzing puck, Manager Patrick, who had been out of the game since 1921, came from the sidelines, took his place. Never a goalie in his playing days, Patrick allowed the puck to slip by him only once, saved the game. In the third game, with a borrowed goalie, the Rangers won the Cup.
Two years ago Lester Patrick did the same thing that Connie Mack has twice done in baseball: disbanded his great team to start building another from scratch. He had paved the way for doing so. Scouting —from the mill pond up—has long been the customary procedure in big-league hockey, but Lester Patrick four years ago brought an innovation to the sport when he started a training school for likely prospects. Because Eastern Canada has been so thoroughly scoured by scouts (75% of major-league players come from either Toronto or Ottawa), Manager Patrick opened his school in Winnipeg, where he could have the field to himself.
From the Winnipeg training school Patrickmen now move, in an orderly progression, to the New York Rovers (Ranger-supervised amateurs), the minor-league Philadelphia Ramblers (for which Lester Patrick's son, Murray, now plays) and finally to the top-notch Rangers. Among the young players recently elevated to the Rangers is another son, Lynn Patrick, 25— who is so good that Manager Connie Smythe of the Maple Leafs recently offered Father Patrick $20,000 for him.
This year's Ranger team, with a few exceptions, consists of the first graduating class of Patrick's Winnipeg training school. In light of its 1938 record, it appears to have had a good commencement.
* Team standing in hockey is reckoned two points for a victory, one for a tie, nothing for a defeat. *Where hockey was invented by two students in 1879.