Rat Portage Thistles
| Kenora Thistles | |
|---|---|
| City | Kenora, Ontario, Canada |
| League | MNWHA,MPHL |
| Founded | 1896 |
| Championships | |
| Regular season titles | 1902,1904,1906,1907 |
| Stanley Cups | 1907 |
The Kenora Thistles were an early amateur men's ice hockey team based in Kenora, Ontario, Canada, formed in 1885 as a senior team by a group of Lake of the Woods lumbermen. The club is notable for winning the Stanley Cup as an amateur team in 1907. The town is the smallest in population to have ever won the Cup. The junior team started play in amateur leagues in the 1890s, and ceased playing in 1907, playing against Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario based teams.
The team nickname has been revived since the demise of the original club in late 1907 to denote minor, junior, and senior league men's hockey teams.
The town of Kenora was originally known as Rat Portage. In the late 1880s, an amateur senior hockey club was formed by older professional men, most of them lumbermen, gold prospectors, or individuals in the local mining businesses. By the early 1890s, several young boys of the Rat Portage area, most of them between the ages of 9-11, formed a junior ice hockey team of the same name, which went on to beat the senior team in an exhibition. Among these young men were future Hockey Hall of Famers Tommy Phillips, Tom Hooper, Billy McGimsie, and Silas Griffis.
Over the next five years, these young players began to populate the senior team and quickly established themselves as one of the premier amateur hockey clubs of the western Canadian provinces. In 1903 they challenged the Ottawa Silver Seven for the Stanley Cup and lost. In 1905 they again challenged the Ottawa squad with the same disappointing results. That summer, the town of Rat Portage changed its name to Kenora.
In January 1907 the Thistles again challenged for the Cup, winning it in a two-game, total-goals series against the Montreal Wanderers. Two other future Hockey Hall of Famers, Art Ross and "Bad" Joe Hall were added to the roster from Brandon, although Hall did not play. The games were played on January 17 and 21 in Montreal. Phillips scored seven goals in the two games and Kenora defeated the Wanderers 12–8, winning both games 4–2 and 8–6.
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