Haileybury Comets

The Haileybury Hockey Club—nicknamed the Comets or the Miners—played out of Haileybury, Ontario, from 1906 until 1915. The team is remembered as a founding member of the National Hockey Association (NHA), the league that later became the NHL. It was created to take advantage of the mining boom sweeping northern Ontario, but the town itself was too small to sustain a major professional hockey club, and Haileybury dropped out of the NHA after just one season.

The club got its start in 1906 as part of the Timiskaming Professional Hockey League (TPHL), a circuit bankrolled by local mine owners. The O’Brien family of Renfrew, Ontario—who owned silver mines, railways, and construction companies—controlled the team. The TPHL existed mainly to entertain miners in remote northern towns, and the owners treated the teams as vehicles for heavy betting.

In 1909, Haileybury made a name for itself by luring professional players like Con Corbeau, Skene Ronan, and Harry Smith away from the Ontario Professional Hockey League and the Eastern Canadian Amateur Hockey Association. Because mine owners placed large wagers on games, O’Brien had the money to entice players to break contracts and join Haileybury.

When the Federal League’s Renfrew Creamery Kings failed to join the new Canadian Hockey Association in November 1909, Ambrose O’Brien organized the National Hockey Association. He included Haileybury and his other TPHL team, the Cobalt Silver Kings, in the new league, along with the Montreal Wanderers, Les Canadiens, and Renfrew—which he had to buy to get it into the NHA.

Haileybury’s lone NHA season in 1910 ended with a record of four wins and eight losses, 77 goals for and 83 against. Notable players included Alex Currie, Art Ross, Paddy Moran, and Skene Ronan. The team’s top scorer was Horace Gaul, whose 22 goals ranked seventh in the NHA that year.

After the 1910 season, owner Ambrose O’Brien pulled Haileybury out of the NHA. The TPHL was revived, and Haileybury played in it for the 1910–11 season—the league’s last—before continuing in the Timiskaming Senior League until 1915.

The Haileybury NHA franchise itself was transferred to Montreal wrestler and sports promoter George Kennedy, who owned the Club Athlétique Canadien and wanted to take over the Montreal Canadiens.