The greatest pre WW1 goalie
Okay, I have always been a bit envious of guys that can play mulitiple sports at a high level.
It’s no wonder that for me one name stand above the rest when I am looking at the unsung heros of the past: John Bower “Bouse” Hutton.
Throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s, there was a surge in popularity in Eastern Canada both hockey and lacrosse. The sports complemented each other nicely as hockey was played in the winter and lacrosse in the summer. Not surprisingly, many of the hockey stars of the early 19th century were also professional lacrosse players including Eduard “Newsy” Lalonde, Paddy Moran, Micky Ion, Lionel Conacher, Joe Malone. At the same time, Canadian football was emerging in popularity as the rules had been established that differentiated the sport from Rugby.
Hockey
Bouse Hutton is probably best known for being an exceptional goaltender for the Ottawa Hockey Club(later Silver Sevens and Senators) in the CAHL from years 1899 to 1904. During this time, Bouse had an outstanding goals against average for the era of 2.86. He temporarily retired from hockey in 1904 and returned for 5 games with the Ottawa Senators in 1909 playing with the great Senators scorer Marty Walsh. However, if the Mighty Bouse had not come out of retirement, his lifetime goals against average (GAA)would have been a stellar 2.50. He was consistently in the top 3 for GAA during his peak years from 1900 to 1904. Compare that with contempary Hall of Famer Paddy Moran,who had a GAA of nearly double at 5.40 during his time in the CAHL.
It’s hard to really understand how good Hutton was during his time in the CAHL until you look a little closer at his stats. Obviously, there is no data that would allow us to calculate save percentage, but we can do a simplified calculation of goals saved over average (GSOA) to see how he compared with his contemparies. By calcuating the opponents average goals scored per game by the average goals against, we can determine, albeit crudely, how many goals Hutton saved over the average goalie in the league.
Analysis revealed that the most accomplished goalie at the start of the 20th century was, in fact, Bouse Hutton. It wasn’t even close with Hutton average 1.64 goals saved over the 5 year period almost 0.7 goals more than the next best goalies with a comparable number of games played.
| Career, 1901 to 1905 | Games Played | GSOA total | GSOA/GP |
| Hutton, John Bouse | 27 | 44.4 | 1.64 |
| Jones, Joseph “Chief” | 24 | 23 | 0.96 |
| Nicholson, Billy | 53 | 45.8 | 0.86 |
| Hunter, Jack | 14 | 6.5 | 0.46 |
| Hern, William “Riley” | 50 | 1.2 | 0.02 |
| Moran, Patrick “Paddy” | 30 | -9.2 | -0.31 |
Hutton became the backbone for an Ottawa Hockey team known as the Silver Seven that won the Cup in 1903 kicking off the first hockey dynasty as Ottawa would win the Stanley Cup again in 1904. Hutton decided to temporarily retire at the end of 1904 and was replaced by Dave Finnie when the club left the CAHL for the FAHL. As a result, Hutton did not play in the famous Stanley Cup Challenge final against Dawson CityNuggests where Frank McGee scored a recored 14 goals in a 23-2 victory.
Bleacher Report places Hutton at 32 ahead of Paddy Moran, Percy Laseur and Lorn Chabot. He won three Stanley Cups was elected to the hockey Hall of Fame in 1963.
Lacrosse
Hutton was also an excellent lacrosse goalie when he played for the Ottawa Capitals, which won the first Minto Cup by defteating Cornwall in 1901. This was a full two years before he won his back-to-back Stanley Cups.
In fact, Hutton semi-retired from hockey to play lacrosse in Brantford. Most likely, this was due to the fact that lacrosse players could get paid at the time whereas hockey was still an amateur sport. As a result, Hutton did not play lacrosse for for Ottawa Capitals in 1904 and 1905 and the team suffered.
No Bouse Hutton for the second year in a row and it showed. Capitals’ 69 goals for were only two behind Shamrocks but they gave up a league high 55!
ThistlesHistory.pdf (wampsbibleoflacrosse.com)
Hutton must have been a force of nature as he would come back the following season and Ottawa would again go on to win 1906 the Minto Cup defeating the Montreal Shamrocks . He finished 3rd in NLL wins with 49 wins.
Football
Now for most of us, being a multi-year champion in two sports would have been enough, but not for Bouse. Hutton also was a tremendous football player who played as a fullback for the Ottawa Rough Riders. On November 15, 1902, Hutton won the Canadian football championship with the Ottawa Rough Riders who beat the defending defeating Ottawa College 5–0
Bouse Hutton was a champion in every sense of the word. I look back in awe of the type of athlete required to pull off such an amazing feat of playing at the highest level in three different sports. Unfortunately, Hutton played before the first set of hockey cards so there is no hockey card of him available. But wait, Hockey fans can still get a card of the HOFer through the C59 and C60 lacrosse set.
So Bouse knows Football, Bouse knows lacrosse AND Bouse knows hockey. Okay, I may be dating myself with that reference, but so are you if you got it.
The Cardboard Junkie 