Patricks in sports cartoons
- Greg Nesteroff
- Jan 28
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 8
From the 1920s to the 1960s, sports pages often featured cartoons depicting players and trivia about them. They was a kind of infographic before the word existed and they were terrific.
While millions of newspaper pages have been digitized online, there doesn’t seem to be any easy way of narrowing searches to only include items with photos or illustrations. As a result, while I have come across 23 (!) cartoons featuring Frank and Lester Patrick, pictured below, it’s mostly been by accident. If I find any more, I’ll add them here. (I have devoted a separate post to Patrick appearances in comic books.)
Source and date: Vancouver Daily World, March 9, 1912. This was part of a larger cartoon depicting recent sporting events. Frank was fresh off scoring six goals in Vancouver’s 10-6 win over New Westminster, a record for defencemen that has never been broken.
Artist: Harry S. Palmer, formerly of the New York World, who also drew several comic strips and worked in animation.
Source and date: Ottawa Citizen, Feb. 15, 1927
Artist: Lank Leonard (who in 1936 created the Mickey Finn comic strip)
This one was reprinted in the Madison Square Garden program, circa 1943, with a caption that accurately noted: “It was 16 years ago this cartoon, reprinted below … drawn by Lank Leonard for George Matthew Adam Service Inc. — first cartoon of record to appear in a New York newspaper picturing ‘Les’ Patrick, the year he came to the Garden to head the Rangers.”
Source and artist: Many papers, March 11, 1927
Artist: Feg Murray, an Oympic hurdler who became a cartoonist and radio host.
Source and date: Many papers, March 16, 1928
Artist: Feg Murray
Source and date: Brooklyn Daily Times, Jan. 7, 1931
Artist: Stookie Allen
Source: Many papers, November 1931
Artist: Jimmy Thompson
Source: Many papers, Jan. 21, 1932
Artist: Feg Murray
Source and date: Eureka, Calif. Times Standard, Jan. 9, 1933
Artist: Feg Murray, reusing his 1927 portrait of Lester.
Source and date: Many papers, February 1933. Also used as part of a card set issued in 1932-33.
Artist: Jimmy Thompson
Source and date: Boston Globe, May 9, 1934
Artist: Gene Mack (pen name of Eugene McGillicuddy), who drew for the paper for 35 years. The National Baseball Hall of Fame Library has some of his original work, but no hockey-related cartoons, it appears.
Source and date: Fredericton Daily Gleaner, Dec. 14, 1934
Artist: Chuck Templeton
Source and date: New York Journal, Dec. 15, 1934, a day before Frank and Lester Patrick met each other for the first time as opposing coaches in the NHL. The cartoon seen here is scanned from The Patricks: Hockey’s Royal Family.
Artist: Burris Jenkins
Source and date: Boston Globe, Jan. 27, 1935, in the first installment in Frank Patrick’s autobiographical series.
Artist: Gene Mack
Date: 1935
Artist: Thornton Fisher. Fisher also drew the comic strip Mr. I Knowitt, plus he hosted a show called Sports Review on WEAF radio in New York. Lester signed the cartoon the day he was a guest on the program. This print, which was part of the Stephen Adamson collection, was sold at auction in 2020 for $264 which seems like a steal to me.
Source: New York Post, circa 1935-36. Reprinted in the 1936-37 Madison Square Garden program.
Artist: Gus Uhlman
Source and date: Richmond, Calif. Record-Herald, March 1, 1935
Artist: Alan Maver, United Feature Syndicate
Source and date: Sport Eye, Nov. 9, 1936
Artist: Levitan (first name illegible)
Source and date: Chicago Daily Worker, Nov. 18, 1936
Artist: Alan Maver, United Feature Syndicate
Source and date: Buffalo Times, Nov. 26, 1938
Artist: Art Krenz, Newspaper Enterprise Association
Source and date: Boston Globe, Nov. 26, 1940. Dick Irvin, rather than Lester Patrick, is called the Old Silver Fox.
Artist: Gene Mack
Source and date: Hobart (Oklahoma) Democrat Chief, Oct. 30, 1944
Artist: John Pierotti, who worked for the New York Post and was president of the National Cartoonists Society from 1957-59.
Source and date: Lester Patrick Night program, Dec. 3, 1947
Artist: Lee Kayetski
Source and date: Circa 1948. The original artwork is on sale on eBay for $800 US.
Artist: Mort Graham
In addition to these, here’s a cartoon from the Vancouver Daily Province of Dec. 21, 1912 by Phil Drew that poked fun at the wealthy-sounding nicknames of Vancouver and Victoria’s PCHA teams.
And another showing the Vancouver Millionaires from the Vancouver Daily World, March 2, 1918, by an artist named Wolfe.
Plus, the City of Vancouver Archives has nine cartoons of members of the Vancouver Millionaires drawn in 1919 by an artist who signed their work “Hal.” It’s not clear what these were intended for, as they don’t appear to have been published in any newspaper, but they incorporated photographs taken by Stuart Thomson. Jason Vanderhill has written about them (and posted the images) on his Illustrated Vancouver blog.
And finally, when Lynn and Muzz Patrick cleaned out the family home on Linden Avenue in Victoria, circa 1972, they found three cartoons (it’s not clear if they were originals or prints) that they gave to their cousin Geraldine (Gerry) Patrick. Twenty years later, Gerry started selling poster prints of those cartoons.
A story in the Victoria Times Colonist described the first of them as a pencil drawing from the New York Post titled “Winning Fire” that depicted the 1940 Stanley Cup final, in which New York defeated Boston. It included a quote from Lester to his players: “At this stage, there’s nothing that I can or need to teach you about the game – what it takes to win you’ve got to carry in there yourselves.”
The second was also from the Post, and was described as a “commemorative pencil drawing of Lester Patrick’s career.” The third was titled “World’s Classiest Team,” and publicized a Rangers-Maple Leafs game of Feb. 24, 1934.
I haven’t been able to locate the cartoons, nor any copies of the posters, although you can sort of make out the two that appeared in the Times Colonist photo below.
Updated Jan. 30, 2025 to add the 1940 Boston Globe cartoon. Updated on Feb. 11, 2025 to add the 1936 Chicago Daily Worker and 1938 Buffalo Times cartoons. Updated on March 27, 2025 to add the 1933 Eurkea Times-Standard and 1935 Richmond Record-Herald cartoons. Updated on April 7, 2025 to add more about the 1927 Lank Leonard cartoon, to add the 1935-36 Gus Uhlman cartoon, and the part about the posters that Gerry Patrick sold.
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