HISTORY OF THE QUEEN�S CUP
HAMILTON, Ont. – When the champion is decided after the McGill Redmen and Western Mustangs faceoff in the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) men’s hockey championship on Saturday, March 12 it will mark the 100th time the Queen’s Cup has been awarded.
University hockey in Ontario and Quebec stretches back well into the 19th century. McGill students were instrumental in staging the first organized hockey game in Canada on March 3, 1875, the Queen's-RMC rivalry stretches back to 1886, and Toronto organized its first formal hockey team in 1891.
In 1902-03, McGill, Queen's, and Toronto established the Canadian Intercollegiate Hockey Union (CIHU). The Queen's hockey team donated a silver cup for the championship of the CIHU's senior division. The Queen's Cup aspired to be emblematic of Canadian university hockey championship at the time, though no teams from outside of Ontario and Quebec ever competed for the trophy. A truly national university hockey championship did not arrive until the advent of the University Cup in 1962-63.
In the early years of the intercollegiate series, the member universities often competed in multiple leagues. Toronto, for example, regularly participated in the Ontario Hockey Association (OHA), capturing that league's title in 1920-21 en route to an Allan Cup title as the Canadian senior champions. It was not until the late-1930s that the Queen's Cup series became the primary focus of its competitors.
In its first four decades of existence, the CIHU’s “senior group”, as it was usually known, consisted almost exclusively of the three founding members, with short-lived appearances by Laval and Montreal. Numerous other smaller universities placed teams in the CIHU's intermediate and junior divisions, but the significant disparity in school size made many such schools either unwilling or unable to compete with their larger colleagues. Even with the relative balance in size between McGill, Queen's, and Toronto, the Queen's Cup championship was essentially a two-horse race between McGill and Toronto, with Queen's winning just five of the first 35 championships, and none after 1913-14.
Montreal and Laval permanently rejoined the senior league after the war, but Queen's withdrew for much of the 1950s.
Throughout the 1950s, increasing agitation for membership in the "senior" ranks from newer and smaller universities, met with resistance by league officials, led to the creation of rival university hockey leagues in Ontario. By 1961-62, the exclusivity of the senior series was finally broken, and Ontario Agricultural College (Guelph), McMaster and Waterloo were granted membership into the newly-formed east division. By the 1970-71 season, conference membership had expanded to 12 teams.
Until the 1960s, the Queen's Cup championship was awarded based upon the regular season standings. A championship playoff was not held unless there was a tie for first place. The increased league membership in the 1960s led to the introduction of a formal playoff structure, and the "Queen's Cup final" became an annual feature in the mid-1960s. Two-game, total-goals finals were held between east and west winners in 1961-62 and 1962-63, and a Final Four tournament first appeared in 1964-65, hosted at Toronto's Varsity Arena, becoming a recurring fixture two years later. Since that time, a mixture of Final Four formats (popular in the 1970s and 1990s), best-of-three finals (used through much of the 1980s), and stand-alone, single-game championships (since 2004-05) have decided the annual Queen's Cup champion.
Intercollegiate sport in Ontario underwent a major restructuring in 1971, resulting in the consolidation of all leagues along provincial lines. The Queen's Cup became the championship trophy of the newly formed Ontario Universities Athletic Association hockey league, which boasted 14 teams in its inaugural 1971-72 season. The OUAA became the OUA in 1997. The Quebec-based teams, which once numbered nine in the early 1970s, played in their own league but by 1987, had dwindled down to just three schools (Concordia, McGill, UQTR). Those were readmitted to the Ontario league for the 1987-88 season, and the increasing popularity of hockey at Ontario universities brought the total number of teams in competition for the Queen's Cup to 19 for the 2010-11 season.
After nearly a century of affectionate abuse, the original Queen's Cup trophy had reached a desperate state of disrepair, with the decorative silver bowl suffering numerous dents and cracks. After being presented to the UQTR Patriotes for the 1999-2000 championship, the original bowl was retired, replaced by a new cup atop the original wooden base.
The original Queen's Cup is now in the care of the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.
Of 99 Queen's Cup championships awarded to date, the Toronto Varsity Blues hold a dominating 41 championship banners, with the McGill Redmen ranking second with 15 conference titles. Toronto won a record 11 consecutive titles between 1914-15 and 1928-29 (interrupted by four seasons suspended during wartime), and another eight consecutive championships from 1965-66 to 1972-73.
QUEEN'S CUP CHAMPIONSHIPS BY TEAM
Toronto 41
McGill 15
UQTR 8
Queen's 6
Guelph 5
Montreal 5
York 5
Laurier 3
Laval 3
Western 3
Waterloo 2
Lakehead 1
McMaster 1
Windsor 1
TOTAL 99
Source: Ian Speers
