Former Springfield Indians, seated, from left, Dave Debol, Dan McCarthy and Joe Augustine sign autographs for fans at a previous Hockey Day.
Reminder Publishing submitted photo
WEST SPRINGFIELD — Over the years, Greater Springfield has been home to Falcons and Thunderbirds. Kings have also reigned supreme. Those hockey teams are part of the region’s history of sending hundreds of local stars to the National Hockey League.
Eddie Shore is one of the more notable players to carve his name in local ice. Shore was a defenseman for the Boston Bruins, winning two Stanley Cups with the team — in 1929 and 1939 — while being named the NHL’s most valuable player four times. He also played for, coached and owned the Springfield Indians at the Eastern States Coliseum in West Springfield.
“Eddie Shore taught me how to skate back when he owned the team in the mid-1960s. He used to open the coliseum on Saturdays, where he would hold skating lessons for hundreds, if not thousands of kids, to inspire future generations to take to the ice,” said Lou Bordeaux, 64, who spent most of his life in the Springfield area and is now the town manager in Westminster, Vermont.
Bordeaux has hundreds of stories, countless recollections and is memorializing it all in the archives of the Springfield Hockey Heritage Society, which he and his brother founded in 2011. The society honors decades of action that began when an ownership group, unaffiliated with the NHL, founded the first professional team to play in the arena on the Eastern States Exposition grounds in West Springfield.
“There’s been pro hockey in [Greater] Springfield since 1926. The original team was called the Springfield Indians. We’ve never been able to get 100% how the team name came to be the Indians. The two big stories are, it was either based on the motorcycle brand, which was made in Springfield, or there was a player here whose nickname was ‘India,’ because he was a full Indian,” said Bordeaux.
There has been almost no break in the action since that first hockey face-off. The federal government did sideline the game from 1943 to 1945 when the Army used the coliseum for storage during World War II. Then, in the early to mid-1950s, Eddie Shore moved the franchise to Buffalo.
“That left us without pro hockey, but the Buffalo experiment didn’t last long, and pretty soon the Indians were dusted off, and Mr. Shore started them all over again in the Pioneer Valley,” recalled Bordeaux.
Since the early days, when referees dropped the first pucks, local professional teams have had numerous owners, affiliated with NHL teams including the Boston Bruins, New York Rangers and Los Angeles Kings.
The first teams played in the Canadian-American Hockey League, where they won the Fontaine Cup championship three times. Over the years, Springfield teams won seven Calder Cups as champions of the American Hockey League.
After decades in the coliseum, the club moved into the Springfield Civic Center when it opened in 1972. Back then they were called the Kings. The story continues in that building — now called the MassMutual Center — where the Indians-Kings franchise played until 1994. Despite losing that franchise, Springfield was able to get another one, the Falcons, the very next season, and when the Falcons’ NHL affiliate bought the franchise and moved it out of town in 2016, local owners brought in the Thunderbirds, again without missing a year.
Although the Indians have the longest history in the region, the Springfield Hockey Heritage Society celebrates the history of all the professional teams that have played in the region.
Saving history
The stories Bordeaux tells and items that have been collected are stored in the society’s archives, which houses old uniforms, pictures, records, documents and other memorabilia that teams, fans and private collectors have donated. One former team employee got his hands dirty retrieving some of the society’s most treasured pieces.
“The Falcons had moved out of town after they were sold to Tucson in 2014. An employee had gone dumpster diving and resurrected a lot of the stuff out of there. There are some things that otherwise would have ended up at Bondi’s Island,” said Bordeaux.
Springfield has seen a revolving door of owners and pro team affiliations. They’ve come so fast and often, there wasn’t always enough time to change uniforms.
“The general manager in Los Angeles told Mr. Shore that that he’s pulling the franchise, shutting it down mid-season. Eddie Shore took the club back, renamed them the Indians, and there’s pictures where the players have white jerseys with the classic red Indians logo on the chest, but the players were still wearing their purple and gold Kings gloves,” said Bordeaux.
Springfield fans are known for the warm reception they give their home teams, regardless of changing connections to NHL teams. But the arena also became famous for cold showers in its locker rooms, something players around the league complained about.
Thousands of players have cycled through Springfield and West Springfield. Bordeaux said a huge percentage of them ended up with numerous NHL teams. Many of them remember their Western Massachusetts roots and appear each year at the society’s annual Hockey Day, where players appear to sign autographs, take photos with fans and tell stories.
Hockey Day this year runs from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 3 in the Young Building at the Eastern States Exposition on Memorial Avenue in West Springfield. There will be auctions, giveaways, food for purchase and merchandise for sale. Admission is $15 for members of the society, $18 for non-members.
For more information about Hockey Day or the archives, call 413-650-7447, email office@hockeyspringfield.org or visit hockeyspringfield.org.
