Cecil 'Babe' Dye'

Babe Dye in his New York Americans uniform. Photo courtesy of the Hamilton Spectator

Babe Dye - a stellar career cut short by injury
Right-winger held scoring records that took decades to break

While Hamilton-born Cecil “Babe” Dye was halfback for the Toronto Argonauts and a baseball player of note with the International League teams of Toronto, Buffalo, and Baltimore, he is best known for his illustrious career in hockey.

Born in May of 1898, Dye played 11 seasons in the National Hockey League, from 1919 to 1931. He played junior hockey starting in 1916 and in 1918 with the Toronto St. Pats when the team was still in the Ontario Hockey Association. When the Pats turned professional and became an NHL club in 1919, Dye stayed with the team, scoring 11 goals in 23 games his first season. In fact, he remained with the Pats for seven of his 11 years with the NHL.

Dye had a brief stint with the new Hamilton Tigers NHL club in 1920, playing in only one game but making his mark with a pair of goals. He returned to Toronto for the remainder of the 1920-21 season, and led the league in goals with 35. He also paced the league in the 1922-23 season with 26 goals, and once again for the 1924-25 season with 38 goals. This final tally stood as a franchise record for 35 years. He also scored nine times in the five-game Stanley Cup finals to lead the Pats to the Cup in 1922, the only time he played with a Stanley Cup winner.

Babe Dye.

At this time the diminutive right-winger (he was not quite 5’ 8” and weighed about 150 pounds), continued to play hockey, but was also playing baseball as well. It was for his love of baseball that he acquire the nickname “Babe” after baseball great Babe Ruth.
Dye was not the best of skaters in the NHL, but he was a master at stick handling and possessed a fearsome slap shot. While he scored 202 goals during his career, his assist total was only 41.

Dye left Toronto after the 1925-26 season with 18 goals, traded to the Chicago Black Hawks. For the next two seasons with the Black Hawks, he scored 25 goals in 51 games, all of these markers in his first season before he had broken his leg at training camp, missing just about all of the second season.

The incident also ended his career earlier than normal. He went to the New York Americans for the 1928-29 season, but scored only once in 42 games. He then went to the New Haven Eagles of the Can-Am league, and then back to Toronto with the 1930-31 Maple Leafs, playing only six games before the newly-name Toronto NHL franchise released him.

After a brief time as coach of the Chicago Shamrocks of the American Hockey Association in the 1931-32 season, Dye left hockey. He remained in the Chicago area until his death in 1962.

Although Dye’s career ended on a sad note, he was one of the best in the NHL during the early 1920s. His 176 goals in just 170 games of his first six NHL seasons set the benchmark for many years to come until Wayne Gretzky rewrote the record book in the 1980s.

Elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1970, Dye won the Art Ross Trophy in 1923 and 1925. He is also ranked 83rd on the Hockey News List of the 100 Greatest Hockey Players.

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