The last time Ottawa and Boston played in the NHL playoffs, it was the Stanley Cup final in 1927, exactly 90 years ago this week.



Of course, New England knuckleheads, Ottawa won. The Bruins did not take it well, an angry swarm attacking the referee after the final buzzer.



I spent a couple of hours this week, tempting blindness on your behalf, to inch through pages of old microfilm of the 1927 Ottawa Citizen. What a happy chore. The names in the series, after all, are hockey royalty: Clancy, Nighbor, Finnegan, Cleghorn, Kilrea, Shore, Denneny, Gorman and my distant but unsurpassed relative, goaltender Alexander “Alec” Connell.



The manager of the Bruins was a guy named Art Ross. The president of the league was one Frank Calder. When it was over, there was a congratulatory telegram from a certain Lady Byng. Reminders, all, that today’s silver trophies were once flesh and blood and bone, with connections to this very soil.



There was something ad hoc and a little savage about the NHL in that era, the league only 10 years old. It was only decided, for instance, that the series would be best-of-five after the first game ended in a tie, despite two overtime periods of 10 minutes. Why end in such an unsatisfying way?

“In the 20-minute overtime period, the ice became so lumpy that the players were unable to pilot the puck. Consequently, President Franck Calder of the N.H.L. ordered the game ended at the end of 80 minutes of play,” the Citizen correspondent wrote, surely chewing on a stogie, wearing a crumpled fedora.



Game 1, apparently, was not quite Don Cherry enough for Beantown.



“The game was extremely mild for a championship event and this fact disappointed the Boston fans, who have been educated to rough and tough hockey by the Bruins.”

This was a time when players had other jobs, looked like harmless accountants — King Clancy, a defenceman, weighed 145 pounds — and wore no helmets. Pucks that went into the crowd were usually thrown back. Even this one:



“The play was delayed another time when a spectator was hit in the head by a flying puck. Players crowded around him with apologies and suggestions as to how to stop the bleeding from a small cut on the forehead.”



Boston fans, our writer noted, had an unruly streak.



“The penchant of the Boston fans for throwing articles on the ice again worked to the disadvantage of the locals. After he had skated over some coins, Referee Laflamme stopped the game and ordered the ice scraped.”



Something else forgotten about that era. The winner of the NHL championship was awarded the O’Brien Cup, then taking on challengers from other leagues for the Stanley Cup, a trophy that traces its roots to Ottawa. Well, that year, there were no challengers from other leagues, so Ottawa won the Stanley Cup, too. (It was the first year the Stanley Cup was solely contested by NHL teams and was, by the way, Ottawa’s last Cup.)



The teams actually tied two games but Ottawa won two by the same score, 3-1, in a series that ended after four. The deciding game was played in the now disappeared Auditorium, before 9,000 fans on April 13.



That’s when the Bruins went bananas.



“Referee (Dr. Jerry) Laflamme left the ice and was making his way through the passage to the room at the end of the hall reserved for the officials, according to the man in charge of the room. Manager Art Ross of the Boston team grabbed him by the sweater to prevent him entering the room and an officer of the Boston club, (Wild) Billy Coutu and several other Boston players assaulted him.”



(The Citizen beat writer called it “a disgraceful ending.” Coutu was later thrown out of the league.)



One played for glory, mostly, as we read:



“While nothing of a very definite nature can be given until all receipts and disbursements have been looked after, it is believed in local hockey circles that each member of the Ottawa hockey team, winners of the Stanley Cup, will receive in the neighbourhood of $1,200 extra salary as a result of winning the world’s championship. This, it is believed, will be a new high record for players’ shares.”



The average NHL salary today is in the range of $60,000 U.S. a week.



So we were down 0-1 to the Bruins in the first round in 2017 before escaping with a 4-3 overtime win in Game 2 after a dramatic comeback.



Just remember rude pilgrims: We won when it really mattered.



To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email kegan@postmedia.com



Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn