Les Cunningham Award Winners From The Cleveland Barons

The Cleveland Barons existed in the American Hockey League from 1936-37 to 1973-74. The Les Cunningham Award was established for the 1947-48 AHL season to honour the league’s most valuable player. In the lifetime of the Cleveland, Ohio franchise, four different players from the Barons won the Les Cunningham Award.

Les Douglas

Les Douglas won the Cunningham Award in 1949-50. With 32 goals and 68 assists for 100 points in 67 games, Douglas was also the recipient of the John B. Sollenberger Trophy as the player in the AHL with the highest point total during the regular season.

Douglas played in the American Hockey League from 1939-40 to 1950-51 with the Indianapolis Capitals, Buffalo Bisons and Cleveland. Between 1940-41 and 1946-47, Les played sporadically with the Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League, appearing in a total of 52 games.

Eddie Olson

Eddie Olson was the next Cleveland player to be honoured with the Les Cunningham Award. Olson took the prize in 1952-53 and, like Les Douglas, also won the Sollenberger Trophy. In 61 games, he scored 32 and added 54 assists for 86 points to lead the league. The Barons were Calder Cup champions that season.

Olson played in the AHL from 1946-47 to 1954-55 with the St. Louis Flyers and the Barons. Eddie never appeared in a National Hockey League game.

Johnny Bower

Johnny Bower is one of just two players to win the Les Cunningham Award three times. Just one of the three came as a member of the Cleveland Barons with the other two being awarded while he was with the Reds in Providence, Rhode Island. Bower won the Cunningham with Cleveland in 1957-58. He played in 64 of the team’s 68 regular season games, posting two shutouts and a 2.19 goals against average.

Bower had played his last game in the AHL with the Barons at the end of that season. The following year, he became a regular goaltender with the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs, a job he would retain until retiring from the game during the 1969-70 season. Johnny was a charter member of the AHL Hall of Fame and is also enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Fred Glover

Besides Bower, Fred Glover is the only other player to win the Les Cunningham Award three times. All of Glover’s victories came while playing for the Cleveland Barons. Fred won the award in 1959-60, 1961-62 and 1963-64. In 1959-60, Glover also won the second of his two John B. Sollenberger Trophies.

Fred played 1,201 regular season AHL games between 1948-49 and 1967-68 while only playing with the Indianapolis Capitals and the Barons. His career totals include 520 goals, 1,334 points and 2,402 minutes in penalties. Glover also appeared in 92 NHL games between 1949-50 and 1952-53 with the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Black Hawks. Like Bower, Fred is a charter member of the AHL Hall of Fame.

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.

Hockey Trivia: Cleveland Barons of the AHL

The Cleveland Barons were an American Hockey League franchise from 1936-37 to 1973-74. The team thrived in the Cleveland market until the Cleveland Crusaders of the World Hockey Association came along in the early 1970’s and diluted the waters. The Barons failed soon after the arrival of the Crusaders and the Crusaders didn’t last long. The curse continued with the NHL version of the Barons that came along soon after and lasted just a few seasons. Test and expand your knowledge of the AHL Barons with the following four hockey trivia questions and answers.

Q. What player holds the AHL’s Cleveland Barons records for most career goals, assists, points and penalty minutes?

A. Fred Glover played for the Barons from 1952-53 to 1967-68. In that time, he scored 410 goals, assisted on 695 and totalled 1,105 points while sitting 2,164 minutes in the sin bin. Inducted into the AHL Hall of Fame in its 2006 inaugural season, Glover is also the AHL career leader in each of those categories with 520 goals, 814 assists, 1,334 points and 2,402 PIM. Before he was a Baron, Fred also played for the Indianapolis Capitals. He saw brief NHL action early in his career with the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Black Hawks.

Q. What arena did the Cleveland Barons play their home games at?

A. The Cleveland Arena was built for the AHL team’s first season. The seating capacity of the Cleveland Arena was 9,900 for hockey games. The rink closed in 1974, replaced by the Richfield Coliseum, and was demolished three years later.

The Richfield Coliseum held 18,544 for hockey but didn’t have a much better fate. The venue was closed in 1994 and demolished in 1999.

Q. What Hockey Hall of Fame goaltender was the AHL MVP in 1957-58?

A. Johnny Bower and the above mentioned Fred Glover are the only two AHL players to be awarded the Les Cunningham Award as the league’s MVP on three occasions. Bower won the award with Cleveland in 1957-58 and had previously won twice with the Providence Reds. Bower moved on to the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs in 1958-59 and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1976. Like Glover, Bower was inducted into the AHL Hall of Fame in 2006.

Q. The Cleveland Barons won the Calder Cup as AHL playoff champion on nine occasions. In which year did they win their first?

A. The Barons entered the AHL in 1936-37 and in 1938-39, just their third year in the league, Cleveland was crowned Calder Cup champions. Although finishing the year just one game over .500 and in third place in the four team West Division, Cleveland beat the Springfield Indians, Providence Reds and the Philadelphia Ramblers in the playoffs to capture the Calder.

Cleveland’s final Calder Cup championship came in 1963-64 with Fred Glover leading the way. After a somewhat mediocre regular season where the Barons placed third in the four team West Division and fourth overall in the nine team league, Cleveland went undefeated in the post season. The Barons swept the Rochester Americans and Hershey Bears before taking out the Quebec Aces in four games in the finals to win the title. That year, Fred Glover won the Les Cunningham Award as AHL MVP and Ted Harris won the Eddie Shore Award as defenseman of the year.