It may have been five days before Christmas, but ‘peace on earth and good will toward men’ was the last thing on minds of the Rangers and Canadiens when they met at the Garden on Sunday night December 20, 1953.
The Montreal Canadiens were the defending Stanley Cup Champions. They came into Madison Square Garden leading the NHL with a 20-11-2 record and had won four of the five meetings between the two clubs so far that season. The Habs were led by Maurice “Rocket” Richard, who at 32 was still in his prime, as well as veterans Elmer Lach and Bert Olmstead. Doug Harvey and Butch Bouchard anchored the defense and Gerry McNeil was the number one netminder. But pushing these veterans were younger players like Jean Beliveau, Bernie ‘Boom Boom’ Geoffrion, Dollard St. Laurent, Dickie Moore and Jacques Plante. In short, the ‘Flying Frenchmen‘ were a powerhouse.
The Rangers, on the other hand, were a team in transition. They had made it all the way to the Stanley Cup finals in 1950 but after missing the playoffs for three straight seasons they were now in rebuilding mode. They were a comparatively young team having promoted forwards Andy Bathgate, Dean Prentice and Ron Murphy as well as defenseman Harry Howell from the 1952 Memorial Cup winning Guelph Biltmores of the OHL. Wally Hergesheimer and Camille Henry were the leading goal scorers and Ivan Irwin and Jack Evans provided muscle on defense. Twenty-nine year old rookie Johnny Bower who was finally getting a shot in the NHL was the goaltender.
The game was nasty from the beginning and got rougher as the evening progressed with sticks and elbows carried high. Making matters worse was the fact that the Rangers were outplaying the Canadiens and led by a 2-1 score in the second period. At 15:20 of the period Montreal’s Bernie “Boom Boom” Geoffrion and Ranger defenseman Bob Chrystal had an altercation near the side boards. Players from both sides rushed in with sticks high. Blueshirt rookie Ron Murphy and Geoffrion exchanged words but were separated by linesman Dom Baolto who grabbed Boomer’s stick away from him. The linesman also had a hold of Murphy’s stick but the Ranger managed to reach over Baolto and whack Geoffrion on the head with the stick. When Boomer reached up and touched his scalp he saw blood on his hand and went berserk. He picked up his stick and chased after Murphy towards center ice. He swung his stick in a chopping motion at Murphy missing by inches. He then took a full baseball type swing at the Ranger, this time connecting with Murphy’s jaw, knocking him down and out.
The Garden’s Dr. Vincent Nardiello and Ranger trainer Frank Paice rushed to Murphy’s aid. They revived him and helped him skate off the ice. He was taken to nearby St. Claire’s Hospital where he was diagnosed with a broken left jawbone and a concussion.
As Geoffrion left the ice the crowd of 13, 615 grew frenzied. Boomer was attacked by a spectator and the Canadien’s bench immediately emptied. The Garden’s security police were able to keep the players from climbing into the stands but the fans littered the ice with beer cans and other assorted missiles.
Both players received match penalties from referee Red Storey, which carried an automatic $100 fine. Following a lengthy review by NHL President Clarence Campbell, Geoffrion was eventually suspended for the Canadiens’ remaining seven games against the Rangers that season. Murphy was also banned from four of those games but he wound up missing the rest of the season due to the injuries he sustained.
Not surprisingly the Canadiens blamed Murphy for the incident claiming that he instigated the attack by refusing to drop his stick when challenged by Geoffrion and then hitting him over the head with it. The incident also caused an off-ice controversy when Maurice Richard wrote a column for Samedi Dimanche, a French language newspaper, protesting the suspension as being “too severe” for what many considered a retaliatory reaction. He went on to accuse Campbell of penalizing Geoffrion simply because he was a French-Canadian. “If Mr. Campbell wants to throw me out of the league for daring to criticize him,” Richard said in his column, “let him do it.” The column had been ‘ghosted’ by another writer, but Richard approved it before publication. Campbell was not happy but the Canadiens averted a lengthy suspension of Richard when GM Frank Selke talked his star into apologizing.
Two days after the incident Geoffrion reportedly received a long distance phone call from an irate Ranger fan. “He said he was coming to Montreal to shoot me, you know, bang – bang, just like that. He sounded pretty mad.”
Ron Murphy returned to the Rangers the following season and was eventually traded to Chicago in 1957. He won a Stanley Cup with the Black Hawks in 1961 and later played for Detroit and Boston before retiring in 1970. Murphy passed away in 2014.
Geoffrion, who had been named Rookie of the Year in 1952, went on to lead the league in scoring twice and be named the NHL’s MVP in 1961 as well as winning six Stanley Cups with Montreal. He retired as an active player in 1964 but signed with the Rangers in 1966 leading them to their first playoff berth in four years and becoming a much beloved part of Ranger lore. He retired again two years later and coached the Blueshirts for part of the 1968-69 season. Boomer also coached the Atlanta Flames as well as the Canadiens and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1972. Sadly, Geoffrion died in 2006 on the same day his number 5 jersey was retired by his beloved Canadiens.
