During these years, the fued between [Conn] Smythe [owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs] and [Art] Ross [owner of the Boston Bruins], who didn't speak to each other for twelve years, even at governors' meetings, reached epic proportions. At one point, Ross hired two longshoremen to rough up Smythe at a game. On another occasion, Smythe took out a large ad in a Boston paper mocking Ross. "If you're tired of what you've been looking at, come out tonight and see a decent team, the Toronto Maple Leafs play hockey," it stated.

The coup de grace came at a game in the Boston Garden. Smythe, ostensibly as a peace offering, had King Clancy skate across the ice in front of the crowd and present a bunch of roses to Art Ross, who had just recovered from a painful hemorrhoid operation. "Insert these up your you know where," read the attached card, written in Latin. Ross, who couldn't read Latin, nodded his thanks to Smythe and grandly passed the bouquet over to the matron of a powerful Boston family, who, unfortunately, could.*

* David Cruise and Alison Griffiths, Net Worth: Exploding the Myths of Pro Hockey, New York: Viking Penguin, 1991, p. 39.