(Editor’s note: This is the first part in a series on Midland hockey player Morley Spiker. The second part will run Thursday.)
In the long and glorious history of Midland hockey, the careers of certain players stand out.
Homegrown talents such as Mike Robitaille, Jack Hendrickson, and Wayne King went on to grace the National Hockey League, while some other local stars like Chuck Henderson, Jim Wilcox, Bill Beauchamp and Bruce Guthrie found success competing across various Major Junior A and minor-professional leagues.
Yet, the remaining men who did spend the majority of their on-ice time representing the town in the Ontario Hockey Association – including, of course, Frank (Fat) Swales and Sib Brodeur – created a wonderful sports legacy that gave their community immense pride and recognition. One of the most prominent among them was Morley Spiker.
From the mid-1940s until the end of the '60s, Spiker proved to be the touchstone for dependability, work ethic and sustained excellence on Midland's junior, intermediate and senior squads.
More difficult than imagining the town without a “big team” during that period, was imagining Morley not wearing a Midland uniform. Even after he'd retired, former media, teammates and opponents alike, when recalling those days, would immediately talk about Spiker's magnificent skills, and his commitment to his hometown.
“Morley seemed to go on forever,” said legendary sportswriter Charlie Noquet, now deceased, who covered Spiker's games for the Midland Free Press. “He was like our own Gordie Howe.”
Born December 21, 1926, in Midland, Morley played organized Ki-Y league hockey (the forerunner of the Midland Minor Hockey Association and the town's Little NHL) as a bantam and midget teenager, before joining the 1945-46 Midland Huskies Junior B club.
With the juniors, Spiker became “one of Midland's leading snipers.” The left-handed shooting centre completed two more seasons for the Huskies under coach Crawford (Fawf) Wilcox, where he created and finished off numerous scoring chances skating beside winger Connie Adams, and either Jack Henderson or Garnet Armstrong, on the team's top forward line.
When Morley was 21, he moved up to the Intermediate A ranks, cracking the Midland Flyers' line-up that in 1948 was led by veteran star Frank Swales. An electrifying puck carrier and superb checker, Swales had earlier defended the blue line for the Seattle Ironmen of the Pacific Coast Hockey League.
Together, Midland's “young blood” and “old guard” meshed, and the Flyers closed out the '48-'49 campaign as the OHA's Georgian Bay group playoff champions and provincial semi-finalists. (The Gananoque Legionnaires edged Midland, 4-3, in the third and deciding game of the best-of-three series, preventing the Flyers from reaching the Ontario final.)
Two years later, Spiker would play with another local hockey legend, Sib Brodeur, after the Midland-based franchise was renamed the Penetang-Midland Flyers, and entered Senior B competition.
Brodeur starred “up front” for the superlative Midland British Consol intermediates across the 1930s, and over two decades had been a “crowd-pleasing fixture” to fans attending matches at the community's Arena Gardens.
He was now winding down his career with the P-M Flyers – and it would be Morley who'd replace him, and eventually take Brodeur's “mainstay” role into the next generation of North Simcoe players.
Throughout the 1950s with the exception of a year with the Peterborough Senior B club), Morley Spiker was a leading points-getter for Midland intermediate teams called the Orphans, Monarchs and Flyers.
He also established his reputation as a dangerous attacker, gaining respect from the district rivals who admired his “hard-skating” style.
Following a 4-2 win by the Flyers against the Collingwood Shipbuilders, in November 1955, Bob (Rose) Bush of the Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin wrote, “It seems whenever Collingwood and Midland hook up in an intermediate hockey game, a fellow by the name of Morley Spiker plays the villain. Spiker scored a pair of counters and was a continual threat through the 70 minutes (which included the 10-minute overtime period).”
“Morley was a smart hockey player,” said Edgar Dorion. “A complete player.” Dorion, later the captain of the Flyers, had watched Spiker perform countless times while growing up playing minor hockey himself and developed quickly enough to become Morley's teammate, beginning in the early 1960s.
Morley Spiker is pictured in his Midland Flyers' uniform in the early 1960s/Photo courtesy Thomas Paradis
“He was a good goal scorer,” added Dorion. “He had a real knack of coming in at the right place when the puck came loose from a scramble. He knew how to go through there and hit the back of the net.
“He could pick the corners. If there was enough room for the puck to go in, he'd score. He wasn't big, but he never shied away from the rough stuff. Morley had a good approach to the game. His passes were always tape to tape.”
Says his nephew, Bill Spiker: “He was doing the (Wayne) Gretzky move, before Gretzky. They called him the 'Haunt.' He'd go behind the net, and they (opposing checkers) couldn't touch him. He'd fake and fake, then he'd come out front, and stuff it behind the goalie.”