Springfield Indians 1959 to 1962: Best All-Time AHL Team?

The Springfield Indians of the early part of the 1960’s were perhaps the best American Hockey League ever assembled. The Indians won the Calder Cup in three consecutive years from 1959-60 to 1961-62, the only AHL team to ever accomplish this feat. Five players from those teams are now enshrined in the AHL Hall of Fame and two are in the Hockey Hall of Fame. In addition, owner of the Indians, Eddie Shore, is in both.

Check out this unique hockey trivia revolving around that 3-peat Springfield Indians team:

The top 5 all-time Springfield Indians point producers played in at least two of those three years. Jim Anderson, Bill Sweeney, Brian Kilrea and Floyd Smith played on all three, while Harry Pidhirny played in 1959-60 and 1960-61.

Five that played for the Indians during those three years are now members of the AHL Hall of Fame. Bill Sweeney, Jim Anderson, Noel Price and Marcel Paille played all three years while Harry Pidhirny played two of the three. The AHL Hall of Fame was inaugurated in 2006. Team owner Eddie Shore has also been inducted.

Two players are now members of the Hockey Hall of Fame. Lorne ‘Gump’ Worsley played just 15 games with the Indians in 1959-60. Gump was inducted into the Hall in 1980. Brian Kilrea was inducted in 2003 in the builder’s category for his work with Ottawa 67’s of the Ontario Hockey League. In addition, Eddie Shore was long a member of the Hall of Fame before Springfield’s glory days, inducted in 1947 for his NHL accomplishments with the Boston Bruins.

Surprisingly, the Indians didn’t dominate the AHL’s individual awards during the three year stretch. In 1959-60, they were shut out of the awards ceremony. Bill Sweeney and Floyd Smith finished 2-3 in AHL scoring but it was Fred Glover of the Cleveland Barons that took the John B. Sollenberger Trophy.

In 1960-61, Bill Sweeney took the scoring title as Springfield placed five players in top ten. Bob McCord won the Eddie Shore Award as the league’s top defenseman and Marcel Paille won the Harry ‘Hap’ Holmes Award for the goalie with the lowest goals against average. 1961-62 was a bit of a repeat, except it was Kent Douglas winning the Eddie Shore, not McCord.

Interestingly, over the three year span, not one of the highly talented Springfield Indians won the Les Cunningham Award as AHL MVP. Fred Glover won twice and Phil Maloney of the Buffalo Bisons won in the middle year. In fact, over the life of the franchise, just one player was honoured as MVP. Ross Lowe will forever be in the Springfield hockey trivia books as the lone man, winning in 1954-55.

At the time, Springfield was the minor league affiliate of the NHL’s New York Rangers. The Rangers were not enjoying as much success, to say the least. 1961-62 was the only year New York made the Stanley Cup playoffs between 1958-59 and 1965-66. They were quickly ousted by the Toronto Maple Leafs in the first round. It is said by many that the team in Springfield would have done better in the NHL than the Rangers.