The Winnipeg Jets raced into this year by setting an early-season record for wins, but the city has another connection to a speedy NHL mark that might never be equalled.
Billy Mosienko was already a star winger for the Chicago Blackhawks when, in 1952, he became a legend.
On March 23, the five-foot-eight nimble skater from Winnipeg’s North End lit the goal lamp three times in 21 seconds.
“It’s just an incredible record from an incredible guy. I think it’s going to stand forever,” said Winnipegger Ty Dilello, author of Mosienko: The Man Who Caught Lightning in a Bottle.
Nicknamed the Mosienko Miracle, the feat ignited a comeback that rallied Chicago from a 6-2 deficit in the third period to a 7-6 victory over the New York Rangers.
“It’s remarkable. It’s so hard for a player to score even two goals in that time,” said Dilello, an accredited writer with the International Ice Hockey Federation and member of the Society for International Hockey Research.
“A lot of things had to go right.”
Bill Mosienko in a 1954 Topps hockey card is a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame and Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame. (1954 Topps Hockey)
The NHL was a six-team league then, and only the top four teams made the playoffs. In 1952, New York was in fifth place and Chicago in sixth.
The outcome meant nothing, so few saw the history-making performance in person. Just 3,254 of Madison Square Garden’s 15,925 tickets were sold.
The Rangers brought up goalie Lorne Anderson from their farm team, while defenceman Hy Buller was skating on a cracked ankle.
But none of that diminishes Mosienko’s accomplishment, Dilello said.
“Three goals in 21 seconds is such a rare oddity that I don’t really think it matters. It would be hard enough to do against a minor league team. It’s just an amazing feat.”
Bill Mosienko flips the puck past Lorne Anderson for his hat trick goal on March 23, 1952. Anderson’s glove, beside Mosienko’s skate, flew off in his attempt to make the save. (Hockey Hall of Fame)
Mosienko, who was serving temporarily as captain, scored his first goal with about 13 minutes left in the game.
He took a feed from Gus Bodnar, swung around around Buller, cut in front of Anderson and slid the puck under the goalie’s gloved hand at 6:09.
The next goal was a carbon copy. From the faceoff, Bodnar found Mosienko at the Rangers’ blue line, where the winger dodged Buller and beat Anderson, again under the glove, at 6:20.
Goal three came 10 seconds later as Bodnar knocked the puck to George Gee, who fed a flying Mosienko crossing into the middle of the Rangers’ zone.
Anderson went low in anticipation. An alert Mosienko instead flipped the puck over the glove at 6:30.
“Bad time to go to the bathroom,” said Dilello, wondering how many in attendance saw what happened in the ticks it takes a heart to beat 30 times.
The game’s NHL scorecard shows Mosienko’s hat trick. (NHL/Youtube)
Until that day, the hat trick record belonged to Carl Liscombe of the Detroit Red Wings, who did it in one minute and 52 seconds against the Blackhawks in 1938.
Mosienko very nearly added a fourth goal about 45 seconds later.
“I was alone again. I faked Anderson out of position, had an open goal to hit and shot wide,” he is quoted saying in the book, The Game I’ll Never Forget: 100 Hockey Stars’ Stories, by Chris McDonnell.
He told reporters after the game he simply got lucky and “caught lightning in a beer bottle.”
That modesty was a character trait of a man also remembered as one of the nicest individuals around, Dilello said.
“There might have been some better hockey players from Manitoba, but as an ambassador of the game, I don’t think there was a better one than Bill Mosienko,” he said.
“He was literally friends with everybody. Just a total gem.”
In the 1944-45 season, Mosienko was voted by fans as the most popular Blackhawk, and won the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy as the NHL’s most gentlemanly player, finishing sixth in league scoring without taking a single penalty.
Newspaper headlines from the Western Star in Corner Brook, N.L., left, and the Winnipeg Tribune, from March 24, 1952, the day after Mosienko’s record-setting night. (The Western Star/The Winnipeg Tribune)
The pucks from those record-breaking goals sat for years in a bureau drawer in the basement of the family home, said Mosienko’s son, also named Bill, who is 77 and lives in the Interlake near Lundar, Man.
“I used to handle them when I was a kid, and they were labelled with the number of the goals,” he said.
They and the wood stick that served as a lightning rod are now on display at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.
Beside them is a blown-up photo of a beaming Mosienko holding the pucks in taped-up hands.
“It’s nice to have that memory, and a lot of people bring it up,” Bill said. “I got stopped by police on the highway once [for a spot check], and the guy said, ‘Oh, I know your name.’ Yeah, it’s something else.”
Bill never felt the weight of expectations as the son of a hockey legend. Quite simply, that gene passed him over.
“I wasn’t that good,” he said with a laugh. “I went skating with him one night and he just skated circles around me. I was 18, he was in his 40s.”
He wore No. 8 but there was clearly something special about 21 for Mosienko, who was born in 1921 and scored his first two NHL goals 21 seconds apart — also against the Rangers.
He retired after the 1954-55 season as a five-time all-star and played his entire career with Chicago.
Mosienko’s final NHL goal came, appropriately, against the Rangers.
Billy Mosienko’s jersey from the 1950 all-star game. (Submitted by the Mosienko family via Ty Dilello)
He later joined the Winnipeg Warriors minor-pro team and helped them win the championship in their 1955-56 inaugural season. Mosienko suited up in four seasons and was named an all-star three times.
He’s a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame and Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame.
In 1991, the City of Winnipeg renamed Keewatin Arena to Bill Mosienko Arena to honour him. He died three years later from brain cancer at age 72.
His career and record-setting hat trick are also honoured in a mural on the side of a bowling alley he and former teammate Joe Cooper opened in 1947 in the North End, about a 20-minute walk from Mosienko’s childhood home on Granville Street.
A mural of Bill Mosienko, painted by granddaughter-in-law Jen Mosienko, went up on the side of the bowling alley in 2016. (Jaison Empson/CBC)
Initially called Cooper-Mosienko Lanes, Mosienko later bought out his partner. He renamed it Billy Mosienko Lanes and was often there with his trademark smile.
“He was a people person. He liked to meet people, liked to talk to people,” said Bill.
The alley, with its giant bowling-pin sign near Main Street and Redwood Avenue, is still there but no longer owned by the Mosienko family.
The business one day will vanish, like the Jets’ hot start to the 2024 season, but Mosienko’s name and accomplishment might just endure.
“He’ll be remembered forever,” Dilello said. “There’s never been anywhere close to a player scoring three goals in that time frame in the last 50 years or so. It’s one of a kind.”
Actually, three of a kind.
