During his career, Red Horner was one of the most beloved members of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Playing for 18 seasons, all with the club, he helped lead them to glory and enshrined himself as a legend of the team.
So, let’s learn about him.
George Reginald Horner was born in Lynden, Ontario on May 28, 1909. At an early age, the family moved to Toronto.
As a youth, he spent his winters playing hockey in Toronto and improving his abilities against others his same age. As a young man, he worked delivering groceries for a relative’s store. One of the men he delivered to was Frank Selke, who years later would be the top assistant to Conn Smythe on the Maple Leafs during Horner’s career.
Horner said,
“I knew Mrs. Selke better than her husband and she sure gave me good cookies on the deliveries.”
It was that connection with the Selke family that helped get Horner his first chance towards playing in the NHL. In the 1920s, Selke coached the Marlboros and he remembered that young man who delivered groceries.
In 1926-27, Horner debuted with the Toronto Marlboros, recording six points in nine games. He followed up that season with nine points in nine games. In the Memorial Cup in 1928, he had 12 points in 11 games.
Proving himself to be a gifted and tough player, he was called up to the Toronto Maple Leafs for the 1928-29 season and never again played junior hockey. In one single weekend in December 1928, he played for the Toronto Dukes, then the next day played in the Brokers League, and that night stepped onto the ice to play for the Maple Leafs.
In his second game against the Montreal Maroons, he was slashed so many times he broke his hand. He didn’t miss a game though.
That first season with the Leafs, he recorded no points but had 30 penalty minutes.
Moving into the role of an enforcer on the ice, he had nine points in 33 games in 1929-30, but tripled his penalty minute total to 96.
He continued in his trend of an enforcer with the Maple Leafs. Over the next two seasons, he had 12 and 16 points but 71 and 97 penalty minutes.
In 1932, he won the Stanley Cup with the Leafs, the only one of his career. During part of the playoffs, he was on the ice with a broken hand taped to a stick and when the Leafs won, he collapsed in the dressing room from the pain.
Another time, he played with a broken thumb and used a steel hook to control the stick in his hand.
Horner’s daughter Judy Fox said,
“He was a tough guy and when things got tough, you got tougher. That was his mantra. He was a very determined person. He was going to make sure he stayed in shape right in the end.”
In 1932-33, he led the league with 144 penalty minutes.
For the rest of his career, except for one season, he always led the league in penalty minutes. Until 1936-37, he never had less than 124 penalty minutes. In 1935-36, he sent an NHL record with 167 penalty minutes.
King Clancy said of Horner,
“No one, not even the toughest guy in the NHL, took liberties with the Leafs. Do one of us dirty, and you had to deal with Red. That was absolutely no fun at all. He was as tough as any man who played the game, an excellent body checker who fought only when necessary.”
On Dec. 12, 1933, he was involved in an incident that changed the NHL. During a game against the Boston Bruins, the Maple Leafs were hitting Boston defenceman Eddie Shore hard on the ice. All game Horner had been hassling Shore. At one point, Horner upended Shore on the ice. Believing it was Ace Bailey who hit him, Shore crashed into him, severely injuring him, leaving him in a coma for 10 days and ending his career. When Horner saw what Shore had done, he punched him and knocked him out with that one punch.
A devout Catholic, Horner truly believed in the mantra of do unto others as they do unto you, and he brought that to his play in the NHL.
Tex Rickard, the owner of the Madison Square Gardens, said,
“There’s the first man I ever saw who loved to fight.”
And sometimes that made a lot of fans angry. During one game in Detroit, a woman came out of the stands and hit Horner in the head with her purse while he was in the penalty box. As it turned out, she was the wife of one of the Red Wings.
In 1935, Macleans wrote a profile of Horner, stating,
“If the large, pleasant looking, red-headed young man who wears his clothes so well and grins rather pleasantly is Red Horner, the Bad Man of Hockey, you say to yourself that this must be another case of Dr. So-and-so and Mr. What’s-his-name. Even when you see him rushing rashly around the rink, this fighting fireball who has disturbed the peace in every big-league hockey house from Montreal to old Missouri does not look like a killer.”
They may have called him the Bad Man of Hockey, but to the Maple Leafs and their fans, he was an excellent team player. Each summer, Horner also taught at a summer camp where he was beloved for his easygoing nature with the kids.
The Macleans profile stated,
“We might also add that Red Horner is one of that rare species, a genuinely modest athlete. Very few stars of sport are braggers, but most of them, if pressed, will admit that they are not far away from the top. Horner, however, really seems to worry about his ability to make good from year to year.”
This pleasant personality off the ice was true. The Windsor Star wrote of him,
“To everyone who knows him in civil life, Red is a model of good conduct, clear of speech and devout of religion.”
The hard playing style did take its toll on Horner, and many wondered if he would end his career early. On Feb. 27, 1940, he said,
“When they stop cheering in Toronto and when they stop booing in Boston, I’ll know I’ve lost the old touch. Then I’ll quit.”
Two months later, Horner retired from hockey.
At the end of his career, he had 152 points in 490 games but an NHL record 1,254 penalty minutes. That record stood until Ted Lindsay surpassed it in the 1950s.
In the playoffs, he added another 170 penalty minutes in 71 games.
While he only averaged .31 points per game in his career, he also averaged 2.56 penalty minutes per game.
When he retired, he was only 31 but the hard play had taken its toll on him.
Conn Smythe stated,
“Red is retiring after 11 years of heavy-duty service while he still can hold his head high. He showed in the recent Stanley Cup series that he has lost none of his fire or his ability to inspire the youngsters on our club.”
The first thing Horner did after he retired was visit an auditorium of a convent to watch two of his three daughters at their dance recital.
After his retirement, Horner divided his time between Florida and Toronto, operating various business ventures. He eventually became the president of the Canada Coal Company.
He said of his time in hockey prepared him for a life in business,
“The two things, hockey and business, were tied together in several ways. I started life on a farm and hard work by everyone was just part of life. Then, in hockey, I learned from Conn Smythe who was a controversial man but nothing but great to me, that complete effort was the one way to get ahead. Sure, the name I had from hockey helped when I got started in the fuel business but, again, success only came through hard work.”
Despite his many years in the NHL, after he retired he didn’t spend much time watching hockey. Instead, he focused on golf and baseball.
In 1965, he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. His induction was somewhat controversial as he was not the best of the defencemen in the NHL, nor even on his own team. It is believed his induction was more for his role as an enforcer in the NHL.
Whether he was deserving of entering the Hockey Hall of Fame or not, Horner was a legend for the Leafs. At one point, another person with Red in their name met him. Red Kelly said,
“I had always dreamt of playing for the Maple Leafs. I remember, when I was a kid, Red Horner and Charlie Conacher came to the Simcoe fair. There were in a white convertible. I remember I shook Red Horner’s hand. I didn’t wash that hand for a week.”
On Feb. 13, 1999, he was involved in the closing ceremonies of Maple Leaf Gardens and the opening ceremonies of the Air Canada Centre. In the closing ceremonies at the Gardens, Horner dropped the puck with Howard March, a member of the Black Hawks who scored the first goal in Maple Leaf Gardens.
In the first game in the Air Canada Centre, he handed a flag to Mats Sundin, the captain of the Leafs at the time, to symbolize the transition from one building to the next.
Some of the loudest, and longest, applause during the ceremony was for Horner.
By the 21st century, he was the last remaining members of the Leafs’ 1932 Stanley Cup winning team.
In his later years, he lived at The Clairmont retirement home in Toronto. Even there, he kept himself in shape and always had exercise grips beside his favourite chair so he could continue to strengthen his hands.
In early April 2005, Horner began to battle pneumonia. After two weeks of dealing with being sick, the end finally came for The Bad Man of the NHL.
When he died on April 27, 2005, he was the oldest living NHL player.
