| Montreal Shamrocks | |
|---|---|
| City | Montreal, Quebec |
| League | AHAC, CAHL, NHA, IAHU, MCHL |
| Founded | 1886 |
| Home arena | Victoria Skating Rink, Jubilee Arena, Montreal Arena |
| Championships | |
| Stanley Cups | 1899, 1900 |
The Montreal Shamrocks were an amateur, later professional, men's ice hockey club in existence from 1886, merging with the Montreal Crystals club in 1896. They won the Stanley Cup ice hockey championship in 1899 and 1900. The club was a founding member of the National Hockey Association (NHA), the predecessor of today's National Hockey League.
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The Shamrocks were founded on December 15, 1886 at a meeting of the Shamrock Lacrosse Club to organize an ice hockey club.[1] The Shamrock Lacrosse Club of Montreal predated the hockey team by twenty years, founded in 1867 by J. B. L. Flynn.[2] In its inaugural season of play, the Shamrocks had both a junior and senior team. The Shamrocks standard of play increased leading to the club playing in two Amateur Hockey Association of Canada (AHAC) challenges, in 1891 and 1892. In 1895, the Montreal Crystals' hockey club merged with the Shamrocks, ending a successful existence of 15 years.
The club rose to be the pre-eminent senior amateur hockey club in North America by the turn of the twentieth century, winning the Stanley Cup in 1899 and 1900 before losing a Stanley Cup challenge in 1901. Following the retirement of its stars, including Hall of Famers Harry Trihey and Arthur Farrell, the Shamrocks faded from prominence and never again had a winning season. They were eventually done in around 1910 by the growth of professionalisation in hockey. Unable to compete financially, and with the myriad splits and feuding in elite-level hockey (which lead to the formation, disbandment, and formation of new leagues), the Shamrocks folded their professional team.
The Shamrocks re-entered competitive play as an amateur team in the Interprovincial Amateur Hockey Union for the 1911–12 season. The club then entered the Montreal City Hockey League in 1912.
While the lacrosse club was a predominately working-class team, based largely in the Irish Catholic industrial working class neighbourhood of Griffintown, the hockey club reflected a more bourgeois background, more in keeping with the image the Shamrock Amateur Athletic Association wished to convey to the wider community of Montreal, as Irish Catholics attempted to integrate into the mainstream of the city's body politic in the late 19th century. Many of the players on the Stanley Cup–winning teams of 1899–1901 went on to study at McGill University, and entered into the city's bourgeois professional ranks as doctors, lawyers, and businessmen.
Harry Trihey, the captain of the Cup-winning teams, became a prominent Montreal lawyer and, during World War I, was commissioned by the Government of Canada to raise the Irish Canadian Rangers, a venture that ended with Mr. Trihey resigning his commission and returning to Montreal in 1916 after the British High Command reversed its earlier promise to Mr. Trihey to send the Rangers into battle as a unit, deciding instead to plug them into the front line as reinforcements. Mr. Trihey also had problems recruiting in Quebec and Ireland following the GPO Rising in Dublin at Easter 1916.
| Year | GP | W | L | T | PTS | GF | GA | PIM | Finish | Playoffs |
| 1896 | 8 | 1 | 7 | 0 | 2 | 16 | 30 | -- | 5th in AHAC | -- |
| 1897 | 8 | 1 | 7 | 0 | 2 | 27 | 37 | -- | 5th in AHAC | -- |
| 1898 | 8 | 3 | 5 | 0 | 6 | 25 | 36 | -- | 3rd in AHAC | -- |
| 1899 | 8 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 14 | 40 | 21 | -- | 1st in CAHL | Won Stanley Cup |
| 1900 | 8 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 14 | 49 | 26 | -- | 1st in CAHL | Won Stanley Cup |
| 1901 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 8 | 30 | 25 | -- | 3rd in CAHL | Lost Stanley Cup challenge |
| 1902 | 8 | 1 | 7 | 0 | 2 | 15 | 62 | -- | 5th in CAHL | -- |
| 1903 | 8 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 21 | 56 | -- | 5th in CAHL | -- |
| 1904 | 8 | 1 | 7 | 0 | 2 | 32 | 74 | -- | 4th in CAHL | -- |
| 1905 | 8 | 3 | 7 | 0 | 6 | 41 | 62 | -- | 4th in CAHL | -- |
| 1906 | 10 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 90 | -- | Last in ECAHA | |
| 1907 | 10 | 2 | 8 | 0 | 4 | 52 | 120 | -- | Last in ECAHA | -- |
| 1908 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 10 | 53 | 49 | -- | 4th in ECAHA | -- |
| 1909 | 12 | 2 | 10 | 0 | 4 | 56 | 103 | -- | 4th in ECAHA | |
| 1910 | 12 | 3 | 8 | 1 | 25 | 59 | 100 | -- | 6th in NHA | -- |
| 1911–12 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 4 | -- | -- | -- | 3rd in IAHU |
The following players have been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame: