The Origin Of The Hat Trick
Sammy Taft ran a hat shop in downtown Toronto that gave out free hats to any NHL player that scored a three goals in one game at Maple Leaf Gardens.
The term “hat trick” first made its way into newspapers to describe a hockey player scoring three goals in one game in the 1930s and 1940s.
However, Sammy Taft is the man who some would say officially coined the term, "hat trick," when he started giving NHL players a free hat if they scored three goals in one game at Maple Leaf Gardens in the late 1940s.
He owned a famous hat store at 303 Spadina Avenue in downtown Toronto near Maple Leaf Gardens.
Taft had his start in the big leagues of hockey pretty early on in life. As a nine-year-old, he became the official mascot for the NHL’s Ottawa Senators in the 1920s.
“Back then a mascot was a good luck charm,” Taft said to The Hockey News. “Whenever King Clancy or Alex Connell slipped me a dime, I had to go to the grocery store and pick up chewing tobacco and oranges for all the players. I guess it was better luck when I went for them.”
Taft was just 13 when the Senators won the Stanley Cup in 1927, but his greatest contribution to the game wouldn’t come until the 1940s when he had grown up to become a popular hats salesman in Toronto.
Growing up along Spadina Avenue, Taft discovered a gift for gab while working as a tie salesman. He was barely out of his teens when he opened a store, during the early days of the Great Depression.
“One day this man walked in and he said ‘Why don’t you sell hats?’” he told the Toronto Star in a 1981 interview. “I told him I was desperate, I could sell anything but I didn’t have any money. The gimmick was, he’d give me a start and I’d either have hats in the store or his money’d be in the bank.”
When the man returned a month later, all but two of the hats had sold.
Taft went on to sell up to 10,000 hats annually at his shop during the 1940s.
The legend goes that in 1946, the Chicago Black Hawks were in Toronto to play the Maple Leafs when Black hawks winger Alex Kaleta stopped in at the Sammy Taft: World Famous Hatter store before the game.
A fedora caught his eye, but he didn’t have enough money to pay for it. Thinking of the promotional possibilities, Taft made an offer: if Kaleta scored three goals against the Maple Leafs that night, the hat was his.
“There was no rhyme or reason to it. I just, for some reason, said ‘you go out there and score three goals tonight and I’ll give you the hat’,” Taft said. “Sure enough, he went out there and knocked in three goals.”
Kaleta did one better and scored four goals on the night to receive the free hat.
That was the start of the hat trick tradition. From that moment on, every player scoring three goals in one game at Maple Leaf Gardens received a free hat. Taft stopped giving out hats for hat tricks in the mid-1950s, but the term has stuck ever since.
Taft is recognized by the Hockey Hall of Fame as coining the phrase ‘Hat trick.’
“All the players wore hats in those days so it was a big treat for them,” Taft said. “It was a big treat for me too.”
Taft’s most famous presentation came in 1952 when Bill Mosienko of Chicago scored a natural hat trick in 21 seconds. That’s still the record for the fastest hat trick in NHL history!
“I interviewed Sammy several times during the 1990s, when I was a poor college student and long-distance phone calls cost a fortune,” said hockey author Paul Greenland. “I was absolutely terrified because Sammy would not stop talking; some of my calls with him were more than 90 minutes long! I don't remember what the phone bill was, but it was huge. I still have these interviews on tape somewhere. Sammy would talk and talk and talk and then pause, saying: ‘Are you with me? Are you following me?’ Then, he would keep gabbing. I couldn't get a word in edge wise!”
Sammy Taft passed away in his early 80s in 1994.
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A special thanks to my friend and fellow author out of Chicago, Paul Greenland, for referring this story to me! Paul has a new book coming out next month on the 1930s Chicago Black Hawks that won two Stanley Cups (1934, 1938) that I can’t wait to read!
Just a terrific article supported so well with illustrations and graphic material. I did not know about his early connection with the Ottawa Senators!
Taft's daughter lives in Ottawa and is very proud of her late father's hockey legacy. It may not be cricket, but it is an integral part of our proud professional hockey history!
Another good article Ty but I fear you will have some opposition over the hat trick originating in Toronto.
From a Google search
Extended Oxford English Dictionary 1999 Edition : "It came into use after HH Stephenson took three wickets in three balls for the all-England eleven against the twenty-TWO THOUSAND of Hallam at the Hyde Park ground, Sheffield in 1858. A collection was held for Stephenson (as was customary for outstanding feats by professionals) and he was presented with a cap or hat bought with the proceeds."