Frank Boucher on Lester Patrick

Frank Boucher was the closest thing Lester Patrick had to a hockey protege.

Boucher played for the Vancouver Maroons of the PCHA from 1921-26, but grew close to Lester while playing for him with the New York Rangers from 1926-38. Lester eventually handed over the team’s coaching reins to him in 1939, and made him general manager in 1946.

Frank Boucher on a 1987 Cartophilium card.

In his 1973 autobiography, When the Rangers Were Young, Boucher had lots to say about Lester. This passage from pages 101-02 may be the most insightful and revealing thing ever written about him.

By long odds, Lester Patrick was the most knowledgeable hockey man I ever met, an imperial figure well over six feet, slim though solidly built, with a crown of thick curling grey hair that eventually brought him the name Silver Fox. When I recall how Lester looked I think of the actor John Barrymore, for he struck the same dramatic poses, tossing back his head and staring archly, and he had Barrymore’s strong jaw and thrusting arrogance. His vocabulary was enormous, even pretentious. He often seemed to enjoy mystifying hockey players, as most of us lacked extensive education, with an overpowering assortment of polysyllables. I sometimes thought Lester must search the dictionary—or perhaps a thesaurus—to come up with a ten-letter word that he could use in place of a shorter one. He could have been a lawyer, a teacher, or an actor, I am sure, for he had a flair in telling a story in broad gestures. He’d use his hands and arms to emphasize a point, or jump to his feet to underline a meaning … He was a frugal man with the corporation’s money—salaries were never excessive on the Rangers in my time— yet he didn’t hold back with his own. He was by turn pleasant, kind, excitable, sarcastic, pompous, understanding, headstrong, gentle, callous and contrite, depending on the circumstances …

Elsewhere, Boucher said: “Often ostentatious, always courtly, Lester owned an unmistakable attitude of authority.”

Boucher wrote the book with a ghostwriter, legendary sportswriter Trent Frayne, so it’s not clear if he actually authored the words above, or if Frayne elicited them from him in a series of interviews. Perhaps some of the adjectives were of Frayne’s choosing.

Boucher and Lester had a falling out in 1946 when Boucher was running his first Rangers prospects camp in Winnipeg. He said he was trying to prove he could do it without relying on Lester’s advice, but Lester took it as an affront, feeling he was being shut out, and left camp in a huff.

Interestingly, one of the players who impressed Lester at that camp was Larry Kwong. A Canadian Press report said Lester “commented on the lad’s ability,” while the Winnipeg Tribune added Lester “liked the way he handled himself on the ice,” but neither gave any more specifics.

Winnipeg Tribune, Sept. 18, 1946, depicting Lester Patrick, Larry Kwong, and Frank Boucher at Rangers prospects’ camp.

Kwong went on to become the first Chinese-Canadian player in the NHL. But his career with the Rangers only lasted one shift, on March 13, 1948. 

As coach and general manager, it was ultimately Boucher’s decision not to play Kwong more, despite the promise he showed. Kwong was the leading scorer on the Rangers’ farm team that season, yet some of his teammates got more of a shot with the big-league club than he did. Boucher probably should have listened to Lester. (Boucher didn’t say anything about Kwong in his book.)

Boucher and Lester reconciled in 1952.