When the Black Hawks clinched the 1938 title in Chicago, Lord Stanley's Cup wasn't in the house.

Frank Calder, the first president of the NHL, thought so little of the 1937-38 Hawks that, prior to the Cup finals against the heavily favored Toronto Maple Leafs, he had the Cup dispatched from Detroit — where the Red Wings had won it the previous season — to Toronto and didn't bother to re-route it to Chicago even as the Hawks had a chance to clinch the series at home.

What's more, the '38 team is one of the most improbable winners in NHL history.

Those Hawks were the lowest scoring team in the league and had backed into the playoffs with a record of 14-25-9. The team had an unheard-of eight American-born players and was coached by Bill Stewart, the first American to steward a team to the Cup.

And the clincher? The Hawks' starting goaltender for Game 1 against the Maple Leafs was Alfie Moore, a member of the Leafs' farm team, the Pittsburgh Hornets.

The Hawks' No. 1 goalie, Mike Karakas, had a broken toe, and it wasn't clear until the afternoon of the first game he would be unable to play. Backup Paul Goodman was at his home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and couldn't make it to Toronto on time. Stewart tried to bring in a ringer, Davey Kerr, the standout goalie for the Rangers. But Conn Smythe, Toronto's legendary manager, protested and the league nixed the plan.

Finally Smythe agreed to let Stewart use his minor league goalie.

But time was short, and Hawks left winger Johnny Gottselig, who knew Moore, found him at a tavern, already several drinks for the worse.

"He'd had about 10 or a dozen drinks," Gottselig said, recalling the incident years later in an interview with John Devaney, author of "The Stanley Cup." "We put some coffee into him and put him under the shower. By game time, he was in pretty good shape."

The Hawks stunned the Leafs 3-1 and even won over Leafs fans, who gave Moore a standing ovation as he was carried off the ice by his teammates.

Smythe was irate to have been "beaten by a hungover, minor league goalie," and refused to allow Moore to play in Game 2. Moore was given $300 and a gold watch for his efforts but only played in three more NHL games in his career.

Moore's Game 2 replacement, Goodman, promptly was burned for five goals in a 5-1 loss.

The Hawks devised a way to fit Karakas' skate with a steel guard to protect his broken toe and he came back to lead the team to a 2-1 victory in Chicago in front of 18,496, the largest-ever crowd to watch a hockey game at that time. Practically overnight, the underestimated team had become the toast of the town.

But Calder wasn't buying into the Cinderella story, and the Cup remained in Toronto as the Hawks clinched the title with a 4-1 victory in Game 4 of the best-of-five series.

Meanwhile Karakas was keen to cash in on a bet he had made with teammate Roger Jenkins, who had told him, "If we win the Cup, I'll push you down State Street in a wheelbarrow."

When Jenkins made good on the bet, a huge crowd turned up to view the spectacle, paralyzing traffic in the Loop.