Shot Right Died October 20, 1953 Career end 1933 Role Ice hockey player Career start 1912 | Name Harry Cameron Weight 70 kg Playing career Height 1.78 m Position Defenseman | |
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Born February 6, 1890
Pembroke, ON, CAN ( 1890-02-06 ) Played for Toronto Blueshirts
Toronto Arenas
Ottawa Senators
Montreal Canadiens
Toronto St. Patricks
Saskatoon Sheiks
Minneapolis Millers
St. Louis Flyers | ||
The one hundred number 77 harry cameron
Harold Hugh Cameron (February 6, 1890 – October 20, 1953) was a Canadian ice hockey defenceman who played professionally for the Toronto Blueshirts, Toronto Arenas, Ottawa Senators, Toronto St. Pats and Montreal Canadiens. Cameron won three Stanley Cups in his career: his first as a member of the 1913–14 Toronto Blueshirts, his second as a member of the 1917–18 Blueshirts and his third as a member of the 1921–22 Toronto St. Pats (all predecessor clubs of the Toronto Maple Leafs).
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Cameron was considered one of the first great rushing and scoring defencemen. He scored 88 goals in 121 games in the NHL. He was also famous for his "curved shot" similar to that of today's curved hockey sticks. Although hockey sticks at the time were made exclusively with straight blades, Frank Boucher once claimed that Cameron played with a stick that was "crooked like a sabre", which allowed him to make his shots drop or veer to either side. Nevertheless, a small handful of contemporary players like Gordie Roberts were able to curve the path of pucks simply by wrist action, and modern historians speculate that Cameron had this ability as well. Cameron was the first player in NHL history to achieve what was later called a "Gordie Howe hat trick", doing so on December 26, 1917. In later years, he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia where he resided when he died in 1953. He was inducted posthumously into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1963.
Playing career
Born in Pembroke, Ontario, Cameron played with the Pembroke Debaters club from 1908 until 1911, before becoming a professional with the Port Arthur Lake City of the Northern Ontario Hockey League. The transaction is also famous as he demanded that his friend Frank Nighbor be signed also.
Cameron (along with Nighbor) joined the Toronto Blueshirts of the National Hockey Association (NHA) for the 1912–13 season and stayed with the organization until the NHA suspended the franchise in the 1916–17 season, including the 1914 Stanley Cup win. He was picked up by the Montreal Wanderers for the balance of the season, playing six games for the Redbands. In 1917–18 he returned to the Blueshirts, now a franchise in the National Hockey League (NHL), operated by the Toronto Arena Company in their Stanley Cup-winning season.
In 1918–19, he was traded to the Ottawa Senators and returned from the Senators in the 1919–20 season to the Toronto team, now named the Toronto St. Pats. He was traded to the Montreal Canadiens in January 1920, but returned to Toronto in the following fall. The 1920–21 through 1922–23 seasons saw Cameron stay with the St. Pats, winning another Stanley Cup in 1922, the third for Toronto in the NHA and NHL.
After the Stanley Cup win, Cameron was released, and he played three seasons as a playing coach for Saskatoon of the Western Hockey League where he switched to forward. After the Western League was folded and its players absorbed in the NHL, Cameron was not picked up, and he joined a succession of minor league teams in Saskatoon, Minneapolis and St. Louis before retiring in 1931. He joined the Saskatoon team in 1932–33, playing nine games. He left the playing side of the game for good, and became the Saskatoon coach from 1934 through 1937.