Billy Breen

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CanadaCanada  Billy Breen Ice hockey player
Date of birth December 6, 1882
place of birth Winnipeg , Manitoba , Canada
date of death September 3, 1927
Place of death Rochester , Minnesota , United States
size 168 cm
Weight 64 kg
position center
Career stations
Winnipeg Hockey Club
Winnipeg Rowing Club
Winnipeg Strathconas

William Wright "Billy" Breen (born December 6, 1882 in Winnipeg , Manitoba , Canada , † September 3, 1927 in Rochester , Minnesota , United States ) was a Canadian ice hockey player at the position of a center and businessman .

life and career

Billy Breen was born on December 6, 1882 in Winnipeg, capital of the province of Manitoba, to Richard Breen, administrator of the Dominion Lands Office , and Sarah Ann Wright. He came from a respected family in Winnipeg. His parents had come to the city directly from Ireland in the early 1880s and helped found the Young Methodist Church there . His athletic abilities were already evident during his school days at the Mulvey School and the Central Collegiate . In his youth he was considered an excellent soccer player ; he also played bowls and golf . However, the sport in which he gained a national reputation was ice hockey. From 1899 to 1907 he was a member of the Winnipeg Hockey Club and the ice hockey team of the Winnipeg Rowing Club . The teams he was a member of have consistently played in Manitoba's top senior amateur league. At that time, this league was also one of the best leagues in all of Canada. Breen led the league as the top scorer in five of its eight seasons. In dr 1903/04 season he was considered a star player in the team of the Winnipeg Rowing Club, which competed against the Ottawa Silver Seven to receive the Stanley Cup . The team from Winnipeg, which Breen led as team captain, lost two of the three games against the team from Ottawa . Seven of the nine players on the team were injured; including Breen, who was described by the Manitoba Free Press as "injured and completely on the ground".

In the 1907/08 and 1908/09 seasons, Breen played in a professional hockey league in Manitoba. However, the league had little success and was dissolved in early 1909 and no longer operated from then on. She experienced difficulties that were common in the early professional leagues in many sports. The games were extremely violent - just note the seven injured from the game for the Stanley Cup 1903/04 - other games were rigged or there were rumors about postponed games. The league also struggled with players and owners who failed to keep their agreements and broke their contracts. Other teams withdrew from play during the current season. Breen had a total of 129 goals in ten years, making him the top goalscorer of the entire decade.

After his only short professional career, Breen, who was rather slender for an ice hockey player - at a height of about 167 cm he weighed 64 kg - never appeared again in higher-class ice hockey. He did not join any of the other teams from Manitoba and was not one of the Manitobans who accepted offers from eastern Canada, the USA or, from 1911, offers from the Pacific coast. Nothing is known about the exact reasons for his withdrawal. It was often suspected that he did not consider himself suitable for the professional game because of his size and weight. His age could also have been another factor. Another suspicion suggests that he might not want to lose his job as an accountant at the Codville Company , a grocery wholesaler in Winnipeg. On January 7, 1911, he married in Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan Province Mabel Campbell Rankin (* 1883; †?), With whom he had a son. She was the sister of Howard Rankin, the manager of the Codville Company where Breen was employed.

Breen would have had the opportunity to play senior amateur hockey at Winnipeg if he had regained his amateur status. In the years from about 1910 to 1914, Winnipeg had the best senior amateur league in Canada, in which Breen also wanted to participate. On the part of the Amateur Athletic Union of Canada , which was against professional sport, however, he felt the full severity. The officials at the Manitoba branch of Amateursportion wanted to punish those who, in their opinion, had promoted professional sport with their participation. Robert Allison Coyne Manning, a Winnipeg attorney, argued that Breen and others played at the professional level from 1907 to 1909 only because amateur hockey was at such a low level during that period. Since he was denied a career as an amateur player from then on, Breen became ice hockey referee and coach. Due to his dedicated work in these two areas, he was finally restored to his amateur status in 1913 and was henceforth officially allowed to appear again as a player for amateur teams. After he had not been in action for four seasons at this point, he tried not to make a comeback and largely withdrew into his private life. That year he had led the Winnipeg Hockey Club to receive the Allan Cup .

In 1914 he joined his two brothers, Nixon John and Thomas George, and with them founded Breen Motor Company Limited , a successful car dealer. When he on 3 September 1927 at the age of 44 in Rochester in the State of Minnesota to lymphoma died, he was secretary and treasurer of the company. Three days after his death, the member of several renowned organizations, including the Carleton Club and the St. Charles Country Club , was buried in Winnipeg. Posthumously, Breen was inducted into the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame .

Awards and successes (selection)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marriage announcement on moosejawgenealogy.com (English), accessed on May 4, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Breen, Billy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Breen, William Wright (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian ice hockey player and businessman
DATE OF BIRTH December 6, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Winnipeg , Manitoba , Canada
DATE OF DEATH September 3, 1927
Place of death Rochester , Minnesota , United States