“Candidates for election as Honoured Members in the player category shall be chosen on the basis of their playing ability, sportsmanship, character and their contribution to their team or teams and to the game of hockey in general”
This week the case I am making has a story that transcends the role of a player or builder category. Carl Brewer was a great hockey player during the “Original Six” era, helping lead the Toronto Maple Leafs to three straight Stanley Cups from 1962-1964. However the thing that “hurt” Brewer was that he was considered to be too smart for his own good at the time. He was constantly butting heads with Leafs coach and GM George “Punch” Imlach mainly for standing up for his rights as a hockey player and introducing agents to the dressing room. He was considered an odd duck, which meant that the powers that be in the NHL could not control him. In this way, he was just as essential to the change of treatment by the owners to the NHL players as Ted Lindsay.
Carl Thomas Brewer was first called up by the Maple Leafs during the 1958-59 season. At that time, the Maple Leafs were in the middle of their biggest Stanley Cup drought (at the time). The last time the Maple Leafs had won the Stanley Cup was in 1951 when Bill Barilko scored the overtime game winning goal in Game 5 against the Montreal Canadiens in what is considered to be the closest Stanley Cup Final in NHL history. After that series, Bill Barilko went on a fishing trip with a friend up near Hudson’s Bay in Northern Ontario when their plane disappeared. The Leafs had not won the Cup since then.
Brewer was a big part of one of the best four man defence crews of all time. The first pairings were Tim Horton and Allen Stanley, both Hall of Fame players, while the second pairing was Carl Brewer and Bob Baun with Brewer being considered to be the puck mover. He was an excellent passer and had a great poke check in order to break up plays. Bobby Baun was the defensive defenceman, and even though he would handle most of the physical work that the position entails, it was Brewer who had the reputation of being one of the NHL’s tough guys.
In 1962 Brewer helped the team finally reach the top of the mountain and win the Stanley Cup. During this season he would accumulate 23 points in 70 games and be named a First-Team All-Star. Those numbers don’t seem like a lot today, but you must remember that this was a pre-Bobby Orr era. There was no such thing as an offensive defenceman. As part of the lore of Maple Leafs history, this was also when they found Bill Barilko’s body… eleven years later.
Brewer would help the Leafs win two more Stanley Cups in 1963 and 1964, becoming one of the greatest dynasties in NHL history. However in the 1965 season Brewer had an argument with goaltender Johnny Bower after which Punch Imlach sent Brewer home to “gain some perspective”. Instead Brewer retired from the NHL, citing he didn’t need the aggravation. This wasn’t the first time Brewer pulled a stunt like that. In his second season (1960) he threatened to retire after the Maple Leafs refused to give him the $100 he thought he was owed to cover medical expenses. Instead he announced he was going to play football for McMaster University. At that point the Maple Leafs ponied up and gave him $200 to return to the Leafs.
A hockey card of Brewer as a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs
The story for Brewer does not end in 1965. After completing his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Toronto, Brewer went to war with the powers that be in international hockey to regain his amateur status. Eventually he managed just that and played for the Canadian National Team for two years. By the 1968-69 season, he moved to Finland where he was a player-coach for HIFK Helsinki. His contributions to hockey in Finland are held in such high regard that he is considered to be the “Father of Finnish Hockey” and was inducted into the Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame in 2003.
Meanwhile back in North America, Carl Brewer’s rights were traded along with Frank Mahovlich, Pete Stemkowski, and Gary Unger to the Detroit Red Wings for Norm Ullman, Paul Henderson, and Floyd Smith in 1968. It wasn’t until the 1969-70 season until the Red Wings, along with Brewer’s former teammates Frank Mahovlich and Bob Baun, were able to convince him to come back to the NHL. During that season he proved he could still play by being awarded as a Second-Team All-Star. Not happy with the situation in Detroit, however, he announced his retirement… again. But again Brewer didn’t actually retire but instead agreed to play for the St. Louis Blues under Scotty Bowman where he would play for two seasons before retiring for a third time.
The hockey world didn’t hear from Brewer again until 1974 when he was convinced again by his former teammate Bob Baun to play in the WHA for the short lived Toronto Toros collecting 25 points in 77 games with the team after which he would disappear from the hockey world again until the 1980 season making another comeback with the Toronto Maple Leafs. At this point Punch Imlach was the coach and general manager again for the Leafs as Brewer came into a Toronto dressing room filled with players who were at war with Imlach and owner Harold Ballard. Ironically Brewer was considered a “spy” for Imlach by the rest of the Maple Leaf players. If they had looked at history at all, however, they would know that Brewer despised Imlach. Brewer would play 20 games for the Leafs before “his services were no longer required” by the club and he retired for the last time.
What makes Carl Brewer unique is the fact that his contributions to the game go way beyond what he did on the ice. He was an instrumental part of reviving the NHLPA as he was the one who introduced player agent Alan Eagleson to the NHL and its players. The unity that Eagleson and Brewer was able to provide for the players is what allowed the NHLPA to fully take form and be established in a concrete way. Unfortunately, Brewer was not aware of Eagleson’s true nature at the time as a power hungry lawyer in both Canada and the United States. Eagleson ended up as good friends with then NHL President John Ziegler and continued to create “sweetheart” collective bargaining agreements for the NHL in exchange for money being put into the player’s pension. Due to the fact that the NHL, not the PA had control of the pension, it led to some shady dealings involving its operations and assets.
Once Brewer found out what type of person Eagleson really was, however, he spent his life trying to rid the hockey world of his presence. Eventually he and his partner Susan Foster would help uncover enough evidence to have Eagleson convicted and sent to prison for racketeering, fraud, and embezzling. Brewer considered Alan Eagleson to be to the most powerful man in Canada at the time. A lot of what he did had to be done in secrecy because Eagleson had his hands in every situation. It wasn’t until the FBI got involved that Eagleson was brought to justice. Upon his indictment, Brewer stood up in the court room and said, “I just want to thank God for the United States of America because none of this would have occurred in Canada.”
On top of that he was one of the people who uncovered that surplus money from the NHL pension was being misused by the NHL. This led to Brewer, Gordie Howe, Bobby Hull, Eddie Shack and three others to take up a lawsuit with the NHL in 1991 to recover some of that money. By the next year the courts ruled in favour of the players. The NHL appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court, but in 1994, they ultimately failed. In the end the NHL settled with the group, giving the pension $40 million.
Susan Foster’s book, “The Power of Two” with the notes that Carl Brewer kept during his years of battle with Alan Eagleson
Every current and former NHL player owes Brewer a debt of gratitude. Despite the fact that alumni could still be better taken care of, they would not have as much if it weren’t for Brewer and Susan Foster. This includes everyone who is already in the Hockey Hall of Fame. When Brewer died in in 2001, it was national news due to the positive contributions he made to the NHL. He did this selflessly, even though a lot of this came at a cost to himself and his sanity. He was always marked as a trouble maker and few took him seriously. However Carl Brewer continued to fight for what was right and was justified in the end. His contributions are on par with the great Ted Lindsay in his fight to create the players’ association in the first place.
As far as the Hall of Fame goes, his peers believe he should be in. Frank Mahovlich said, “he was a brilliant hockey player. He should be in the Hall of Fame. He had so much talent. We won three Stanley Cups with him in the early ‘60s. I remember in ’64 he played a very strong series to win the Cup for us.” As well, Red Kelly would go on to say, “He would certainly be a worthy candidates. His playing ability and what he did [as far as the NHLPA and the NHL Pension]… he deserves it as much as anyone else.” Bruce Dowbiggin, who followed Brewer’s fight against the NHL and co-authored the famous book “Networth” echoed those statements in his eulogy saying he should be in the Hall of Fame.
As I quoted at the beginning of the article, the qualities they look for in a player nomination are playing ability, sportsmanship, character, and contribution to a team or hockey as a whole. Though his playing career can be considered suspect due to his indecision about retirement, he has shown each of the rest of those attributes in spades. He helped build the Finnish hockey program which is a superpower today, he fought through the doubters to do what is right for the league, and those contributions have helped a great number of players in the past and in the future. The hockey world owes a debt to Brewer and I hope he is honoured one day for that.
Let me know if there is anyone else you want to see in the Hockey Hall of Fame by either commenting here, emailing me at
[email protected], or following me on Twitter, @Kirshenblatt.
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NHL Playoff Third Round Prediction
Rangers over Canadiens in 7
Kings over Blackhawks in 7
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HHOF Making the Case:
Steve Larmer
Reggie Leach
Alexander Mogilny
Pat Quinn
Kerry Fraser
Paul Henderson
Chris Osgood
Marguerite Norris
Eric Lindros
Pat Burns
Curtis Joseph
Theo Fleury
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