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Quickies

Did you know …

that the first NHL player of Asiatic descent was Larry Kwong? The son of a Chinese grocer in British Columbia, Kwong was pretty much only in the NHL for a cup of coffee when he played a single shift for the New York Rangers in a game on March 13, 1948.

What kind of car was Tim Horton driving when he was killed?

Cochrane, Ontario-born Tim Horton is now better known as the franchise name of a colossal doughnut-and-coffee empire, but for 24 seasons he was one of the NHL’s most durable, dependable defencemen. After a couple of brief stints with the Toronto Maple Leafs in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Horton came to stay in 1952–53. He was a fixture on the Leafs’ defence until he was traded to the New York Rangers in 1969–70. During the 1960s, he and a crackerjack blueline squad that included Allan Stanley, Bob Baun, and Carl Brewer helped Toronto win four Stanley Cups (1962–64, 1967). Horton’s 16 points in 13 playoff games in 1962 set a record for defencemen (long since outstripped), and he was capable of rushing up ice in a burst of speed to deliver a pretty hard slap shot to an opponent’s net. The brawny defender played briefly for the Pittsburgh Penguins after his time with the Rangers, then ended up with the Buffalo Sabres and back with his old Leafs coach George “Punch” Imlach in 1972–73. Horton, now in his forties, wanted to retire the next season, but Imlach persuaded him otherwise. On February 21, 1974, Horton was killed in a car accident near St. Catharines, Ontario, after a game in Toronto. A notorious speeder, he was headed back to Buffalo in the new Ford Pantera sports car that Imlach had given him as a signing bonus to play one last season. During his long NHL career, he played 1,446 regular-season games and scored 115 goals and 403 assists for 518 points, adding another 11 goals and 39 assists in the playoffs. Today the doughnut company Horton founded in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1964 (later taking on former Hamilton policeman Ron Joyce as partner) has nothing to do with his survivors except in name, but it has mushroomed into a billion-dollar corporation that employs more than 70,000 people in Canada and the United States.