This Day in Hockey History – October 29, 1939 – Babe’s Benefit

(Photo: The Montreal Gazette as found on Newspapers.com)

Before the first official All-Star game, NHL All-Star teams played in a few exhibition games to raise money for certain players. After the tragic death of Albert “Babe” Siebert, NHL stars banded together to play the Babe Siebert Memorial Game on October 29, 1939.

Babe Siebert began his NHL career with the Montreal Maroons and quickly became known as the “Flying Dutchman” playing on the feared S Line (with Hooley Smith and Nels Stewart). He finished his first season in 1926 with the Stanley Cup. The S Line lasted until 1932, when Siebert was traded to the New York Rangers. At the end of that first season with the Rangers, he again won the Stanley Cup. He then briefly played for the Boston Bruins before the Montreal Canadiens snapped him up in 1936. During his first year with the Canadiens, he earned the Hart Trophy. He retired in 1939 after 592 regular season NHL games (140G, 154A, 294P). A few weeks later, on June 9, 1939, the Canadiens named Siebert as their new coach.

Babe Siebert
(Photo:Montreal
Gazette (accessed via
Google), via Wikimedia
Commons)

Sadly, before he could start his new coaching job, Siebert drowned in Lake Huron near St. Joseph, Ontario. His family had gathered at their cottage to celebrate his father’s 80th birthday, and on August 25, Siebert took his daughters, Judy and Joan, out to swim. The girls’ inflatable inner tube drifted from shore, so Siebert swam out on a retrieval mission. He followed the tube too far, tired, called out for help, and finally disappeared in the waters about 150 feet out. His friend, Clayton Hoffman, tried to help, but his clothes hindered his swimming. He said later, “Before I could reach him, Babe had gone down for the last time.” Soon 15 men gathered to “watch the shoreline for the body and to dive in the spot where Siebert disappeared” and a “fishing boat set out from Grand Bend to start dragging.” The body was not recovered.

The tragic death of the 35-year-old prompted the NHL to organize a memorial game with the purpose of raising money to support Siebert’s family. Siebert’s wife “had been paralyzed from the waist down after complications during the birth of their second child,” so most of his paycheck and savings went into her care. She and their daughters would be left without his support. Although, at just 6,000, the game’s attendance was “short of expectations,” the needed funds came in. They met their goal of $15,000 (Canadian, worth about $254,026 in 2017).

Two months after the drowning, the Montreal Forum hosted the Babe Siebert Memorial Game. Siebert’s Canadiens played against the All-Star team, which had partly been selected by Art Ross (of Boston) as manager and partly chosen by the “annual Canadien Press poll.” The game featured exhibition-style hockey “with a minimum of body-checking and the lads taking care not to get hurt,” but the All-Stars kept the crowd excited until the game ended 5-2 in their favor. As Harold McNamara wrote for the Montreal Gazette, “To say Canadiens were outclassed might not be fair to the Frenchmen, who after all were asked to face the best in the game, but it is true nevertheless. The Frenchmen managed to get attacks organized now and then, but mostly they broke up on the almost impregnable defence flung up by Eddie Shore, Ebbie Goodfellow, Earl Seibert and Art Coulter.” He concluded, “To say that the All-Stars, whom Art Ross of Boston, had the pleasure of managing, were good would be putting it mildly: they were great. But they were a ‘Dream Team’ and they had to be good.” Beyond being good on the ice, their good deed in playing the game significantly helped Siebert’s family after his loss.

 Additional Sources:

• “Babe Siebert, of Canadiens, Drowned at 35,” The Gazette (Montreal), 26 Aug. 1939, p. 1.
• “All-Stars Drub Canadiens, 5-2, In Siebert Memorial Game,” The Gazette (Montreal), 30 Oct. 1939, p. 10.
• https://www.hhof.com/LegendsOfHockey/jsp/LegendsMember.jsp?mem=P196403&type=Player&page=bio&list=ByName
• https://www.hhof.com/htmlSpotlight/spot_oneononep196403.shtml