Two former Kingson athletes Harv Milne and Bob Moses, will be inducted into the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame this week. Milne and Moses will be honoured for winning the Centennial Cup with the Rockland Nationals – fifty years ago in 1976.

It’s a pretty short list of Kingston players that played in two national championships – two years apart. The pair were part of Doc Wagar’s Kingston Gurnsey Midget team that lost to Verdun in the final of the 1974 Wrigley Cup tournament. Two years later, Milne and Moses belonged to the Cornwall Royals and were playing for the Royals affiliate team in Rockland, ON – winning the Centennial Cup.

In those days Kingston-based super scout Gord Wood had nine Kingston players signed with the Cornwall Royals. Rick Paterson, Cam MacGregor, Gord Botting & Dave Ottenhof were playing in Cornwall. Milne, Moses, Tim Torrance, Peter Young and Bill Jenkins were all assigned to Jr “A’ teams.

Rockland was only in its third year in the Ottawa-area Central Junior Hockey League when they hired an unknown Bryan Murray to be their head coach. Murray was a 33-year-old Phys-ed teacher at a high school in Shawville, Quebec, and he would go on to have a 35-year career in the NHL as a Coach and General Manager – getting to three Stanley Cup finals – including in 2007 with the Ottawa Senators.

Murray had to commute 90 minutes each way to Rockland and put 30,000 kilometres on his car that season. The previous year in 1974-75, Rockland had a young team with 15 rookies. Milne, the rugged Kingston defenseman, was named the team’s Rookie of the Year. Moses, a year younger than Milne, was starting his junior career in Rockland as a 17-year-old leftwinger during the 1975-76 season.

Milne was a centre when he started playing minor hockey, but playing for the Huskies in the Rotary-Kiwanis Minor Hockey Association he had two different coaches, Jim Gebhardt and Bill Burega, both former Kingston Aces defensemen, that convinced Milne he should be a defenseman. Gebhardt and Burega made a good call on Milne.

Reflecting on his time in Rockland, Milne remembers Bryan Murray as a strong communicator, “Bryan was very understanding of personal issues players may have, he would listen and try to accommodate you, but would explain why if he couldn’t do it. Murray also had high expectations – if you didn’t produce or weren’t a team player, you weren’t going to be around.”

Murray was a great recruiter and he convinced two of the top scorers from the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League to come to Rockland, Michel Brisebois and Jean Thibodeau. It was pretty much an even split between French & English speaking players in the Rockland dressing room, unique in that era, but they became a tight knit group.  

Rockland  started rolling in November and finished on top of the Central Jr. ‘A’ League with 31 wins, 11 losses & 8 ties. They beat Brockville and Gloucester to win the Central League and qualify for the Centennial Cup playdowns. In those days you had to win six full series (24 wins) to capture the Centennial Cup. Today, like the Memorial Cup – the Centennial Cup is a round robin tournament.

Rockland beat Lac-Megantic Royals from the Eastern Townships to advance to the Central Canada finals against the Guelph Platers. Guelph was considered the top Jr ‘A’ team in the country and favoured to beat Rockland. The series was a 2-3-2, two games in Rockland, three in Guelph and if needed the last two in Rockland. The Nationals decided to play the first two games in Hull, QC hoping for a larger gate. Rockland lost both games, alienated their own fan base, the players didn’t like it and it was a disaster.

They lost Game Three in Guelph and were now down 3-0 in the series, it looked to be all but over. Rockland even considered removing the ice from their home arena, “It took a half a dozen of us to bring the other guys onboard,” remembers Milne. “we had to believe we were the better team, we were tougher and could score more goals.”  

Despite being a rookie, Moses spoke up in the dressing room prior to Game Four, “ I reminded everyone that the last game is the toughest to win. And I heard several Guelph players had been out late the night before already celebrating what they thought would be a series sweep – it gave us all extra motivation.”   

Behind the great goaltending of Rick Nickelchok, picked up from the Brockville Warriors for the playdowns, Rockland rebounded to win the next three games setting up a deciding seventh game in Rockland.  Milne says Nickelchok was a huge addition, “Rick was a great goaltender, but he was also a very nervous goalie. Every game he would throw up between periods he was so nervous.” The following season Nickelchok would become the number one goalie for the Kingston Canadians.

It was no contest in Game Seven in Rockland, Michel Brisebois, who missed part of the series attending law school, pumped in four goals and Rockland won easily 9-3 to cap off an amazing comeback. “We always thought we had a great team, but being down 3-0 to Guelph was a real wakeup call. Maybe we weren’t as good as we thought we were, and you’re only as good as what you produce on the ice,” remembers Milne.

Rockland would now face the Charlottetown Colonels with a berth in the Centennial Cup at stake. Rockland fans filled two 40-seat airplanes to fly to Charlottetown. Rockland swept the series in four straight to win the Dudley-Hewitt Cup and would face Spruce Grove, Alberta Mets for the Centennial Cup.

It was decided to reduce travel costs for both teams, the entire series would be played in Rockland, giving the Nationals huge home ice advantage for the entire series. Rockland added an additional 300 seats to their 1,400 seat arena and the entire town of 4,000 was going crazy over the Nationals.

At a press conference before the series started, Moses remembers Spruce Grove coach Doug Messier (Mark Messier’s father) promising it would be a very physical series, “Messier was bragging about how tough the teams were from the west, Bryan Murray just sat there calmly and did not respond.”

Milne knew his team could handle the rough stuff, “our team could play whatever way you wanted. We had lots of skill & talent, but also plenty of team toughness, we could do whatever was needed to win.” Rockland’s team toughness would be tested early – twice during the series including prior to Game One a brawl broke out in the pre-game warmup. Milne found out later it wasn’t by accident, “Spruce Grove had six extra players on their roster, tough guys who didn’t play, but Messier sent them out for the pre-game and that’s where the trouble started.” Police had to intervene and on the second occasion officials left their dressing room without their skates to break up fights.

Rockland set the tone in the opening game they would not be intimidated, winning 9-4 in a three-hour marathon with over 200 minutes in penalties. Rockland would win two of the next three with a chance to wrap it up in five games.

In front of an overflow crowd in Rockland, 17-year-old rookie Gerry Leroux, at 5-foot-7 and 130 pounds scored twice and was named MVP (Leroux had 8 goals in the series) as Rockland finished off Spruce Grove with a 7-3 victory to win the Centennial Cup.

The party for Rockland fans lasted well into the night. In just their third season Rockland was the best Jr ‘A’ team in the country and the first Ottawa-area junior team to win a national title since the Ottawa Hull Canadiens won the Memorial Cup in 1958.

Bryan Murray coached just one season in Rockland, leaving for a job in Pembroke before hitting the big time. With their Centennial Cup rings, Milne and Moses went to training camp that fall with the OHA’s Niagara Falls Flyers, but they weren’t fans of legendary coach Hap Emms and came back to Rockland where they were treated like celebrities in the small town.

The Nationals faced serious financial issues due in part to large travel expenses incurred on the road to their Centennial Cup win. The team folded at the end of the 1976-77 season, Milne embarked on a 29-year policing career, Moses came back home to play a couple of years with the Kingston Jr B Voyageurs. In his final season with the Vees Moses played on a line with two 15-year-olds, Scott Arniel and Mike Linseman and Moses led the team in scoring. In the decades since Moses has become a well-known Kingston hockey official and baseball umpire.

The Rockland franchise was resurrected in 2017 when Gloucester relocated there, and just a couple of weeks ago Rockland played in the Centennial Cup tournament in Summerside, PEI, but failed to get through the  preliminary round.

Fifty years later memories of that thrilling 1976 Centennial Cup come flooding back. The old arena is long gone, the amalgamated town of Rockland-Clarence now has more than 30,000 people. Much has changed, but there will be lots of memories and stories to share when Harv Milne and Bob Moses along with their Rockland teammates go into the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame on May 27th. Winning creates a lifetime bond among former teammates.

Mark Potter is a longtime Kingston broadcaster & honoured member of the Kingston & District Sports Hall of Fame