Ralph Hansch; Edmonton firefighter's netminding won gold for Canada at 1952 Games
Hyfler/Rosner
Edmonton firefighter's netminding won gold for Canada at
1952 Games
A member of the Edmonton Mercurys, a team entirely sponsored
by a car dealer, he held off a strong U.S. squad at Oslo.
Canada would not repeat the feat for another 50 years
TOM HAWTHORN
Special to The Globe and Mail; Globe archives
April 16, 2008
VICTORIA -- His face bare in the chill Oslo air, Ralph
Hansch stood alone protecting the net as the clock ticked
down the final seconds of Canada's 1952 Olympic hockey
tournament.
His workday near an end, the goaltender could contemplate a
rough game during which he surrendered three goals on 13
shots. Those would be forgiven so long as he did not give up
another goal to the rival Americans in the dying seconds.
The game ended in a 3-3 tie, a result that gave Mr. Hansch
and his teammates an Olympic gold medal.
The firefighter and his fellow amateurs would return to
Edmonton to be greeted along a parade route by thousands of
happy fans. The reward for the players, who had taken
holidays and leaves of absence from their jobs, was to have
worn the hockey sweater of their homeland and returned as
Olympic champions.
Little did Mr. Hansch and the rest of the Edmonton Mercurys
know that they would have to wait half a century before
another Canadian hockey team would come home with Olympic
gold.
The Mercurys, who were named for the car dealership that
sponsored the club, were allowed to bolster their lineup
before leaving for the Winter Olympics in Oslo. Among their
additions was Mr. Hansch, a backup goaltender who had made
his senior hockey debut with the Edmonton Flyers just two
years earlier.
Mr. Hansch and Eric Patterson shared goaltending duties
throughout the European tour, which included many
pre-Olympic exhibition games.
Just getting overseas was a marathon in 1952. The team
boarded a Trans-Canada Air Lines plane in Edmonton with
stops at Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal. The
following day, they caught a transatlantic flight to
Paisley, Scotland.
The Canadians were outfitted with snazzy, tri-colour woollen
sweaters for the Olympic tournament. The chest featured a
knit maple leaf logo with "52 OLYMPICS" and the club's name
wrapping around in a banner. The back said "CANADA" and bore
the player's number.
Mr. Patterson chose No. 1, a standard number for a starting
goaltender, but Mr. Hansch selected the same lucky number he
had worn ever since he was a boy: No. 0. The International
Olympic Committee ordered him to make another selection, but
he insisted on going with a choice that earned him the
nickname Mr. Zero from teammates. Olympic organizers soon
after adopted a rule barring the uniform number from further
use.
Mr. Hansch got the starting nod in the opening game, a
lopsided 15-1 victory over Germany. Two days later, he was
in goal as Canada defeated Finland 13-3, although the Finns
managed to score three times on just seven shots on goal.
Mr. Patterson started three of the next five games, while
Mr. Hansch was in the net for Canadian victories over
Czechoslovakia (4-1) and Sweden (3-2).
The final game was played Feb. 24 at the outdoor Jordal Amfi
rink in downtown Oslo before 10,000 cheering fans. Canada
jumped to a 2-0 lead before the United States scored twice
within a minute to tie the match. Don Gauf's unassisted goal
on a scramble late in the second period gave Canada the
lead.
Wave after wave of Canadian attackers fired the puck at
beleaguered U.S. goalie Dick Desmond, who would make an
exhausting 55 saves.
Mr. Hansch had a quieter time at his end of the ice, until a
desperate Jimmy Sedin, of St. Paul, Minn., poked in a pass
to tie the game with just two minutes, eight seconds left on
the clock.
The draw gave Canada a tournament record of 7-0-1, while the
Americans leapfrogged from fourth to second place, earning a
silver medal.
The Canadians celebrated on ice, tossing their trainer in
the air and singing For He's a Jolly Good Fellow while
excited fans swarmed the players in search of souvenirs. A
bottle of champagne was produced, and players took turns
sipping the bubbly from a trophy.
The team arrived home to a parade and a victory banquet. Not
surprisingly, the parade started at the Waterloo Mercury car
dealership, which was owned by Jim Christiansen, a
businessman who had bankrolled the team and watched the
gold-medal victory from the sidelines in Oslo. It has been
estimated that the 1952 season cost him $100,000 of his own
money, including most of the equipment and a sizable chunk
of the travel expenses.
Shortly after the parade, Mr. Christiansen came down with
pneumonia that had taken hold in Norway. Finally admitted to
hospital, he never recovered and died just weeks later.
After the victory celebrations, most of the players returned
to their day jobs, which for many included selling cars at
Mr. Christiansen's dealership. For the Mercurys, hockey was
recreation, not vocation. At the time, the National Hockey
League had just six teams, providing employment for stars
such as Gordie Howe, Maurice Richard and Ted Lindsay but
little room for anyone else. Most young men who wanted to
play competitively did so without pay. And, of course,
amateur status was required to play in the Olympics. "In
those days, you played for the heart," Mr. Hansch told The
Globe's Brian Laghi in 1998, "and for the companionship of
the guys."
For his part, Mr. Hansch went to the firehouse. He retired
as a firefighter in 1984 after 35 years of service.
In 1953, he married Bonnie Wright, who had won a Canadian
championship with the Edmonton Mortons softball team two
years earlier. She was inducted into the Softball Alberta
Hall of Fame in 1990.
In those days, Canadian teams won the Olympic hockey
championship with regularity, missing only in 1936 to a
British team stocked with Canadian-born players. The
Canadians started faltering after teams from the communist
bloc began dominating with players who were professional in
all but name.
The success of the Europeans came as no surprise to Mr.
Hansch and his former teammates. He would tell anyone who
would listen just how good the Czechs and others had become.
"I used to say to people I would take any bet that was
reasonable that, if we didn't send at least a semi-pro team
next time, we would lose," he said 1998.
The Mercurys story was retold in Canadian newspapers every
four years during the Winter Olympics. Mr. Hansch would join
his former teammates in a chorus cheering for another
Canadian gold medal in hockey. In 1994, he cried when Canada
lost a shootout for the gold medal against Sweden.
The drought finally ended at Salt Lake City in 2002, 50
years after the Mercurys' triumph.
RALPH HANSCH
Ralph Lawrence Hansch was born May 20, 1924, in Edmonton. He
died there on Feb. 29, 2008, five days after the 56th
anniversary of the Mercurys' Olympic gold medal. He was 83.
He leaves two sons, including Randy Hansch, a goaltender for
the Canadian national team in 1988-1989; a daughter; two
grandchildren; a great-granddaughter; and a sister. He was
predeceased by his wife, the former Bonnie Wright, who died
in 2003 at the age of 75.