The NAHC was rolling at the conclusion of the 1923 Challenge Cup Finals. The Ottawa Athletics ruled hockey, and an NAHC Club hadn't lost a Cup in years. The NAHC owners felt that they had the sport's best players in the sport's best markets (with the possible exception of Quebec). When the executive board, comprised of the four club owners and the league president, convened in Toronto in November, Toronto owner Bert Thomas opened the meeting by saying, "Let's take charge!"
Thomas went on to explain that with the war, the influenza epidemic and Jack Connolly's disruptive ways behind them, the NAHC was in position to take over the sport. The TCHA, Thomas said, "(was) dying a slow death in the small cities of the far west" and the USHA was "full of hockey neophytes except Connolly, who has stuck himself in the league's worst market." The others - particularly Ottawa owner Martin Delaware (who had a long and bitter relationship with Connolly) listened intently. Andre Gauthier, the Quebec owner who had purchased the club from Auguste Raymond back in 1919, asked what everyone was thinking: "And what do you have in mind?"
One thing that everyone owner in each of the three "major" hockey leagues in 1922-23 knew was this: it's all about the box office. In these days before radio started bringing the game into people's homes, it was the ticket purchaser who paid the bills. And though the free-for-all of signing each others' players had ended and the three loops were selling and trading players among themselves, the owners were businessmen first - so it was all about getting "fannies in the seats."
In Toronto, the attraction was the high-powered duo of Jack Barrell and newly imported Charles Rausse. In Montreal, the fans were grumbling about the departure of Gevis Murphy, but still had the Vandenburg brothers, and a couple of new favorites in a pair of Quebecois youngsters named Ernest Bernier and Rene Mailloux. Ottawa had Davey Vert, Charlie Oliphant, Efrem Massicotte and "the other" Bernier brother, Harry. Quebec had Paddy O'Donoghue to Montreal leaving the fans unhappy, though they still cheered hard-hitting Hank Lucas, scrappy Joseph Bently and Hank Walley. But of all the would-be marquee players, the one who shone brightest was Barrell.