Lester Patrick’s Official Hockey Game

In 1939 or 1940, a New York company called Toy Creations created a board game called Lester Patrick’s Official Hockey Game (or Les Patrick’s Official Hockey Game, as the score sheets it came with called it). Reportedly it came in two versions: one with a spinner, and one with dice, in addition to a board representing a rink, two metal nets, and a wooden mini-puck. 

As the book 100 Things Rangers Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die put it: “Players took turns rolling the dice to see where on the board the puck would go, all the while praying that someone would hurry up and invent the video game.”

I don’t know how big a seller it was (in 1945 one department store advertised it for sale for $1 US, the equivalent of $17.23 US today or $24.82 Cdn), but copies come up for sale on eBay periodically, usually in the $100 US range. I have been sorely tempted to bid, not because I’m particularly interested in the gameplay, but for the fabulous box it came in and the attractive game board design. 

The game was fondly remembered by at least a couple of people. Detroit Free Press sports editor Joe Falls reminisced about it on Sept. 24, 1965.

The Lester Patrick hockey game was pretty good. It cost $2 and came with a pair of dice and a small black disc. Two could play, but it was better by yourself. That’s so you could do the announcing. The players were painted on the board. You got a goal by moving the disc around the checkered squares until it went through the opening on either side of the goalie. The Montreal Canadiens won the 1943 Stanley cup by beating the Rangers, 17-11, in the seventh and deciding game … 

He brought it up again in his column of Dec. 23, 1966, which pooh-poohed the fad of electronic sports games. 

The OFFICIAL Lester Patrick Hockey Game was the best, especially after you kept after Uncle Hans to hook up red lights behind each net and a green light, too, that would light simultaneously with a buzzer to end the period. 

(There was another fleeting mention in his Feb. 6, 1966 column too.)

In 2024, veteran hockey writer Stan Fischler related how, at the age of eight, he was invited to play the game with friend Abe Yurkofsky. Fischler declared it “the best indoor game in the whole wild world.” Their match was cut short prematurely. It was the only time Fischler ever played it, but he never forgot it, and it came to mind when he wrote a tribute to Yurkofsky upon his death at 94.