They called him the “Hard Rock” and there never was a more suitable moniker to describe this rugged little policeman of the ice lanes in the days when hockey players had to be rugged to survive.

John Dance played in the shadow of such great Collingwood stars as Rabbi Fryer, Jack
Burns, Frank Cook, Harold Lawrence, Angus McKinnon and the Foulis brothers but
it was his back checking and bodychecking that gave the stars the chance to shine.

He played junior for several years before he made the Intermediate club in 1911, the year after the Shipbuilders won their first O.H.A. title.

The team missed out in 1911 and 1912 but it was Dance who knocked down the
obstacles and led the team to the championship again in 1913.

It was his greatest year. He skated interference for the big scores and took many
a thump that was meant for the top scorers, Fryer, Burns and Lawrence, but his
goal came in the big clutches.

Three times on the way to the final round, Dance came through with game winning
goals. Collingwood won the first game of the provincial final against London
Acadians 6-5 and Dance poked in the winner. London won 2-1 at home and tied the round. The third and deciding game played before six thousands fans in Toronto went to the Shipbuilders 3-2. Dance scored one goal and set up the winner.

Collingwood did not win another championship until 1918 and once again John Dance bore the brunt of the enemy attack. He hung up his skates in 1919 but he took them down again twelve years later. With his old teams mates, Frank Cook and Jack Burns, he came back to help the Odd fellows win the Collingwood Senior Hockey title.
He was forty-three years old at the time.

John Dance died on April 14th, 1965, in his 77th year.

Back at the turn of the century a Collingwood hockey coach watched a wiry red headed
nipper weave back and forth through thirty or forty kids on a west end mill pond.

He wore a pair of beaten up spring skates and he carried a home made hockey stick. With that stick he performed miracles with a wooden puck. He only relinquished possession of that wooden missile when he felt like a rest.

That was the last time Ernie Fryer ever played on a mill pond. He was quickly injected into the line-up of the Collingwood Shipbuilders and for the next three decades he wrote his name across the record books of the Ontario Hockey Association.

He played his entire hockey in Collingwood with the exception of the two-season
stint in Northern Ontario and a season with a senior club in Toronto.

He captained and spearheaded the Collingwood Shipbuilders to five Intermediate
“A” provincial titles in 1910-13-18-19-20. He and Frank Cook turned down a pro offer from the Montreal Canadians mid-way through the 1920 season.

They said at the time that they could not leave Collingwood with the Shipbuilders on the way to a third straight championship. Of course, the amateur rate of pay was pretty good in those boom days of the early twenties.

The late Lou Marsh once said, “Rabbi Fryer was the greatest amateur player I
ever saw. Everything he did in a hockey rink came natural.” Fryer was a legend in his time and he was still good enough to command star rating at forty-eight years of age. I saw him play his last game in Midland in 1934. He scored two goals and drew five penalties. He was his own policeman right to the end. When the final bell sounded, a thousand fans jumped the boards to shake his hand. The rest of the team was dressed and back in the hotel before Fryer left the rink. It was the first time I ever saw anything but fire in his eyes, but there were tears that night. It was the Rabbi’s finest hour.

We have no hesitation in inducting Ernest Fryer as the first member of Collingwood’s Sports Hall of Fame. He died November 15th, 1969. We will never see his like again.

Collingwood has been the birthplace of many colourful sports characters over the past
seventy-five years and the Sailor must rank high on the list.

We have always thought that he never received the recognition he deserved and apparently Connie Smythe thought so too.

When Jimmy died in 1968, Smythe said, “Herberts was the most underrated player in the N.H.L. because too much attention was paid to his fun loving antics. But he was one of the best of his era and a natural hockey player.”

He had a ten-year career with Boston, Toronto and Detroit and several years with International League clubs. He also took a fling at refereeing in the British Hockey League but his antics were just a little too much for the staid English hockey promoters.

He was a star right from the start in his rookie year with the Bruins as he scored
seventeen goals and picked up ten assists in a 30-game schedule. This was a
most remarkable feat when you realize that the goal production for the whole Boston team that season of  1925 was only forty-seven goals.

The  season of 1925-26 was his best. Playing between Carson Cooper and Hugo
Harrington he scored 27 goals in 36 games and finished third in the standing
behind the great Nels Stewart and Cy Denneny. In 1927 he finished fourth in the
scoring race and the Bruins made the Stanley Cup finals for the first time. The
Ottawa Senators defeated the Bruins that season two games to nothing with two
games tied. The Sailor’s contribution was three goals.

Jimmy moved on to Toronto in the middle of the 1928 season but although Smythe valued his ability, he  refused to put up with his frolicsome behaviour and his utter disregard for training rules. He finished his N.H.L. career with Detroit where he succeeded in helping Jack Adams to acquire a cluster of ulcers. He once upset the whole scoring structure of the league by claiming two points for one goal. In a game against New York Ranges he managed to recover his own  pass and score. According to Jimmy’s calculations an assist counted a point and so did a goal. Since he was the passer and the scorer it just had to be two points for Herberts. Of course, he didn’t get away with it, but he had the official scorer puzzled for awhile.

Herberts had that race gift of showmanship that kept his name in sport pages. A Detroit writer panned him once for failing to show up for a game. Jimmy was as mad as wet hen. Not for the panning. He was ruffled because the writer misspelled his name.

Ab Hughes was the fifth Collingwood born hockey player to make the National Hockey League and he did not achieve this mark until he was past thirty. That is considered to be an advantage age for a rookie but he stayed up there for three years with the old New York Americans and went on to a successful coaching career in St. Louis.

He started as a junior with Collingwood and immediately caught the eye of a Toronto hockey scout who induced him to come to Toronto in 1917. He was only sixteen at the time but he starred with Aura Lee and helped that team win the Ontario Junior “A” title.

His career was interrupted for almost three years when he served with the Canadian
armed forces in World War 1 but he took up right where he broke off and was a
member of the Collingwood Intermediate O.H.A. champions in 1920.

He saw a great deal of senior action with Toronto, Hamilton and Welland and then signed a professional contract with the New Haven Eagles and later played two years with the New York Americans in the N.H.L. in 1931 and 32.

Scotty Carmichael  (founder of the Hall of Fame) was one of a group of Collingwood fans who made the trip to Toronto to see Hughes play his first game as a N.H.L. pro in the new Maple Leaf Gardens in 1931. What a show he put on for the home town fans. Abbie scored two goals and the Amerks beat the Leafs 3-2.

In the late thirties he was signed as a player-manager of the team fledging St. Louis
team in the American Association. He is credited with educating St. Louis to the ice game as he held skull sessions with the fans between periods and before games and organized the first hockey school.

Mike Brophy was one of the slickest stick handlers ever to come out of theEast End mill pond.

His hockey career lasted fifteen years, ten of them in the professional ranks. His
athletic ability was not confined to hockey for Mike was a hard hitting football halfback, a softball pitcher and infielder of not and a much better than average golfer.

The size of his hands, like two Maple Leaf hams, always fascinated me. He could
take a football from the centre, wrap his fist around the leather and sail through the line with both arms flailing. Mike played his first organized hockey with the Collingwood juniors in 1924.

In 1925, he was a member of an outstanding Collingwood junior club that
unfortunately ran into the Owen Sound Greys in the first round. The Greys, with
Cooney Weiland, Butch Keeling, Ted Graham and Dutch Cain, went on to win the
Memorial Cup.

Mike went to Owen Sound in 1926 and that club ended up in the O.H.A. Junior finals against Aura Lee. He turned professional with the Chicago Cardinals in 1927 and the next year found him in Hamilton in the old Can-Pro League under the coaching of Hap Holmes. The following year, Holmes moved the whole team to Cleveland in the International Leagues and Mike’s traveling days were over.

He became a hockey landmark in Cleveland and stared with that team for eight years until the end of his active career. During that time he helped Cleveland win the Calder Cup and three times led the league in scoring and made the All-Star team four times.

At one time he played with three other Collingwood born players on the Cleveland team-Reg Noble, Artie Clark and his brother, Bern.

Mike should have had a crack at the N.H.L in 1930 a deal was all set for a trade
with Montreal Canadians but Holmes balked and kept him in Cleveland.

Mike never got the chance again. He organized, managed and played for the Pros in
the first Collingwood Senior Softball League.