Since being expelled from the North American Hockey Confederation in 1917, Jack Connolly had been loudly proclaiming that he'd be back with a league of his own. And though this was mostly treated as so much noise by the NAHC and the western-based Transcontinental Hockey Association, Connolly was working towards his stated goal.
The first decision was the easy one: Connolly wanted to build his league in virgin territory - the large and densely populated cities of the United States. While the TCHA had put clubs in both Portland and Seattle, those cities were far from the big metropolises east of the Mississippi. And while hockey was nowhere near as popular as baseball, it also wouldn't compete with the spring and summer sport - and the amateur version of hockey was popular, particularly in the northeast and around the Great Lakes. So Connolly courted wealthy and sports-minded individuals in large U.S. cities like New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and Detroit. Those were the places in which he wanted to plant his flag.
In later years, if you were to wander into a bar in, oh, Toronto or Montreal, you might come upon an elderly gentleman. Were you to ask him about old-time hockey, he'd refer to the 1920-21 season as the "last pure season." He might frown and then continue by explaining that 1920-21 was the year before Jack Connolly really messed things up. And you can be sure he'd use language more colorful than that seen here. If you're wondering what changed... well, that's a story for another time. But the 1920-21 season? That's detailed below.
The Toronto Dukes continued their trend of improvement as their younger players began to make a bigger impact. They began the season without winger Jack Barrell, who they loaned to Quebec in an effort to bolster the NAHC's weakest club. Barrell played just one game for the Champlains before he requested a return to Toronto. In his one game with Quebec he scored two goals, so convincing the Dukes to take him back wasn't difficult. Barrell, now 22 years old, finally came into his own in 1920-21, finishing third in the league in goals with 32 and in points with 37. As a club, the Dukes posted a 15-9 mark, tying Ottawa for first-place and necessitating a two-game, total-goals series to determine who'd play for the Challenge Cup.