The Montreal Wanderers hold one of the strangest records in professional sports: they were a founding member of the National Hockey League and they lasted six games.
Six. Then their building burned down and the franchise simply ceased to exist.
Before the NHL: A Dynasty in Red
To understand how strange the Wanderers' NHL story is, you have to understand how good they were before the NHL existed.
Founded in 1903, the Montreal Wanderers were one of the dominant forces in early Canadian hockey. Playing out of the Westmount Arena in Montreal, they won the Stanley Cup four times: 1906, 1907, 1908, and 1910. In an era when the Cup was a challenge trophy that could change hands multiple times a season, the Wanderers defended it repeatedly against challengers from across Canada.
Their roster read like an early hockey Hall of Fame ballot: Lester Patrick, Ernie "Moose" Johnson, Riley Hern, and Art Ross (yes, that Art Ross, the man the NHL's leading-scorer trophy is named after). They played a fast, aggressive style and they wore red, earning them the nickname "the Redbands."
The Wanderers were the establishment. They were what a hockey team was supposed to look like.
The Birth of the NHL, 1917
By 1917, the National Hockey Association had collapsed under the weight of infighting, largely over the behavior of Toronto Blueshirts owner Eddie Livingstone. The other owners wanted him out, and the cleanest way to remove him was to dissolve the league and start a new one without him.
On November 26, 1917, at the Windsor Hotel in Montreal, the National Hockey League was formed. The founding teams were the Montreal Canadiens, the Montreal Wanderers, the Ottawa Senators, and the Quebec Bulldogs (who ended up not playing that first season and were replaced by the Toronto Arenas).
The Wanderers were a founding franchise of the NHL. Their name is on the birth certificate.
Six Games and a Fire
The Wanderers' 1917-18 season was a disaster from the opening whistle. The roster had been gutted by World War I enlistments and player defections, and the team that took the ice bore little resemblance to the dynasty of a decade earlier.
They opened the season on December 19, 1917, with a 10-9 win over the Toronto Arenas. It was the first win in Wanderers NHL history, and it would also be the last.
They lost the next five games, getting outscored badly in each. The team was terrible, attendance was poor, and owner Sam Lichtenhein was publicly threatening to fold the franchise unless other teams loaned him players.
Then, on January 2, 1918, the Westmount Arena burned to the ground.
The fire destroyed the building that both the Wanderers and the Canadiens called home, along with all of the Wanderers' equipment. The Canadiens found a new home at the Jubilee Rink and kept playing. Lichtenhein used the fire as the exit he had been looking for and withdrew the Wanderers from the NHL on January 4, 1918.
Final NHL record: 1 win, 5 losses. Six games. Done.
The Legacy
**They were one of hockey's first great dynasties.** Four Stanley Cups between 1906 and 1910 puts them among the most successful teams of the pre-NHL era. That deserves to be remembered separately from the six-game footnote.
**They prove how fragile early pro hockey was.** A single building fire could erase a franchise with four championships. There were no insurance structures, no league relocation protocols, no billion-dollar valuations. Teams existed at the pleasure of one owner's checkbook and one building's roof.
**They are the NHL's shortest-lived founding member.** No other founding franchise disappeared so fast or so completely. The Canadiens are still playing. The Senators name was revived. The Wanderers are gone, and the record book has one line for them.
Four Stanley Cups. Six NHL games. One fire.
Montreal Wanderers 1917-1918 | Gone in the Fire | Hockey Tee – Odd Man Rush