Muzz Patrick was boxing champ before winning Stanley Cup with Rangers

Legendary hockey reporter Stan Fischler writes a weekly scrapbook for NHL.com. Fischler, known as "The Hockey Maven," shares his humor and insight with readers each Wednesday. 

This week Fischler harks back to the pre-World War II era when Murray "Muzz" Patrick was an all-sports hero in Canada. After winning Canada's heavyweight boxing title, Patrick had to decide between a professional career in boxing or hockey. As you will see, he ultimately became a Stanley Cup champion. 

Fischler and Patrick worked together in the 1954-55 season when Muzz was Rangers coach and Stan was assistant Blueshirt publicist. Fischler's boss, Herb Goren -- mentioned in the story -- previously had been a top hockey writer for the New York Sun newspaper.

You name it and the chances in the 1930's were that Murray 'Muzz' Patrick could play a sport better than most anyone in the Dominion of Canada. Hockey, basketball, boxing, six-day bike racing, football, track and field, soccer, lacrosse and cricket all were Patrick's specialties. 

One reporter covering Muzz, who was playing basketball for the Victoria Blue Ribbons at the time in 1933, remarked, "Show Patrick how to play a game and he'll come back and give you a lesson in how to play it."

As a kid, Patrick favored boxing.  It was a matter of survival since older brother Lynn, a future Hockey Hall of Famer, kept beating him up during basement bouts at their home in Victoria, British Columbia.

"Lynn was always giving me a thrashing," Muzz explained, "So I taught myself how to box and finally caught up with him. He said he knocked the stuffing out of me a hundred times. I beat him only once. But after my first win, he wouldn't fight me anymore."

When the British West Indies fleet docked at Victoria, it sponsored a fight tournament headed by its heavyweight champion Sailor McRae. Patrick knocked him out in the first round. Then Patrick heard about the Canadian championships in Edmonton.

"I didn't have enough train fare, so I asked my father for money,” Patrick said. “He wondered why I wanted to go all the way to Alberta to see the fights and I told him that I want to fight in them, not watch them. So, he wound up giving me the money."

Winner of all but one bout, Patrick next entered the British Empire boxing championships in Montreal and that's where his fight career peaked. Although he seemed too green to challenge for the heavyweight title, he did reach the final.

Tommy Osborne was the defending champion and considered a sure winner. In fact, promoters were so sure that Patrick lacked the goods they had Osborne's name engraved on the back of the gold medal before the boxers entered the ring. 

Recalling the fight to Herb Goren for the November 1955 issue of Hockey Pictorial, Patrick offered a blow-by-blow of the title match.

"Osborne knocked me down twice in the first round, but I got up and finished him in the second. I got the medal but it still had the faint lines of Osborne's name over which mine was superimposed."

Despite his run of success in boxing, Patrick never lost his love for hockey. It didn't hurt that his father, Lester Patrick, was one of the most famous NHL players and foremost managers that hockey has known.

Nicknamed "The Silver Fox," Lester developed the New York Rangers into Stanley Cup champions in 1928, only their second year of existence, and produced another Cup winner in 1933. A year later, Lynn became a productive right wing for the Rangers.

Boxing was still on Patrick’s mind, but hockey began winning the tug-of-war.

"My mother didn't want me to be a fighter," Patrick explained. "I also was concerned about not breathing properly because of a deviated septum. I had an operation and that ended my boxing career.

"That' when I got serious about hockey."

The transition was easy. Having moved to New York in 1934, Patrick hooked on with the Rangers’ minor league team, the New York Crescents, who became the New York Rovers the following season. Since they played their home games at Madison Square Garden, Lester was able to regularly scout his younger son.

"Although Muzz was big, tough and a natural defender, he took his time getting to the NHL,” Goren said. “First it was the  Rovers, then the Philadelphia Ramblers, New York's top farm club, and then a one-game NHL audition with the Rangers in 1937-38. His dad was impressed."

Lester promoted Muzz to the Rangers in the fall of 1938. Now he was a teammate with older brother Lynn, who would become one of the League's leading scorers. Muzz, at 6-foot-2, 220 pounds, skated side by side with Hall of Famer Art Coulter. Together, they were an intimidating duo.

Although a boxing career was in Patrick’s rearview mirror, he did throw punches with any on the ice with any opponent willing to go toe to toe with him. His most notorious fight erupted during the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 1938-39 against the Boston Bruins.

"Eddie Shore of the Bruins was considered the No. 1 tough guy in hockey," said Goren who then wrote hockey for the New York Sun. "As a rule, opponents didn't want to mess with him. But when Muzz realized that teammate Phil Watson was in trouble, Patrick was there to help.

"All of a sudden, Shore meddled and that's when Muzz stepped in to protect Phil. He hit Shore with three jolting punches and that was it for Eddie. The blows came so fast and furiously, it seemed that Patrick just tossed one punch."

New York Times columnist John Kieran offered this account: "Muzz was having a fine time and would have lingered longer over Shore except that the referee and gendarmes interfered. 

"By that time Eddie looked as though he had gone through a threshing machine on his hands and knees. It took a good half hour to paste and patch Shore together again." 

According to Shore biographer, C. Michael Hiam, "Muzz had the upper hand throughout and had broken the Bruin's nose in two places, cut him under the right eye and lacerated his mouth."

Boston won the series and the Stanley Cup that spring but a year later Patrick and the Rangers captured Lord Stanley's chalice in a six-game Final against the Toronto Maple Leafs. Now, the big, cheerful curly-haired defenseman was getting ready for even bloodier fights in the years ahead.

After World War II began in 1939, Patrick became the first well-known NHL player to volunteer for the U.S. Army. He rose from buck private in 1941 to captain at the conflict's conclusion on V-J Day in August 1945. 

He participated in the United States invasion of North Africa, followed by the fierce battle at Anzio in Italy. Patrick's last intense involvement was with the GI's invasion of Southern France, which eventually led to V-E Day signaling Germany's defeat in Europe.

After returning to the Rangers and playing 24 games in 1945-46, Patrick turned to coaching and managing. He finished his hockey career in New York, after being named general manager of the Rangers in 1955.

"Muzz turned a lackluster team into winners, reviving a club that had been out of the playoffs for five years," New York Journal-American hockey writer Stan Saplin said. 

After nine years of managing, in Patrick moved on from the NHL in 1964. He eventually retired to his home in Riverside, Connecticut, where he died of a heart attack in July of 1998. 

But the Patrick love of hockey was passed on through Muzz's family. His son Dick has been the longtime president of the Washington Capitals and grandson Chris is Washington’s associate general manager.

As for Lester, he must have been delighted that his two-fisted son eschewed a career in the ring for life in hockey arenas, especially New York's Madison Square Garden, where ‘The Silver Fox’ held forth for more than two decades.

"Muzz may have been a fight champ," concluded Goren, "but hockey, not boxing, was his first love. It also was his last love -- all with the Rangers. He helped them win a Stanley Cup, then  coached and finally managed his beloved ‘Blueshirts.’ A nice hat trick if ever there was one!"