They were labelled “the greatest Canadian team ever” to win an Olympic gold medal and Hugh Plaxton was considered the player who made them tick. “The headiest player on a team noted for brain,” the Toronto Star of the day sang the praise of Plaxton and his teammates after their Olympic conquest.

It was in 1928, the year the stock market went crashing down and the Canadian flag climbed to the loftiest place at the outdoor arena in the Swiss mountain splendor of St. Moritz. Canada became Olympic hockey champions, marking for the second time in a row that the Canucks stood atop the victory podium. Actually, it wasn’t anything like today’s Team Canada that won it all. The team that masqueraded as Canada and beat the pants off the world was the University of Toronto Varsity Grads. “It was a good team,” recalled Plaxton while taking a stroll down memory lane a half a century later at his Mississauga apartment. “The Europeans were just learning the game over there and we didn’t have much trouble winning.”

     Indeed, they did not. En route to the Olympic gold, the Varsity Grads turned the tournament into a virtual shooting gallery, scored 28 goals and did not give up any as they took turns whitewashing Sweden 11-0, Switzerland 13-0 and Great Britain 14-0 in a whirlwind ice blast at that famous Swiss Alpine resort. “Yes I scored quite a few goals, I can’t remember how many,” said Plaxton “We didn’t keep track of who scored how many goals. That was part of our game.”

     The Varsity Grads, who accounted for one of five Olympic hockey championships won by Canada over the years, are still considered possibly the best-ever side ever to be sent over to Europe. Winning the Olympic gold was easy, getting there was a lot tougher. In order to earn the trip, they first had to win the Allen Cup back home in Canada. “Amateur hockey was the big thing those days,” Plaxton recalled. The Toronto Maple Leafs were only a year old and professional hockey wore its bootees. Amateurs consistently drew larger crowds than the pros and the Grads were the frontline attraction of the day, coached by a gentleman who was to become a legend in professional hockey in later years, Conn Smythe. It was Smythe who guided them to the Allen Cup, but didn’t make the trip to the Olympics. “We didn’t need a coach in that type of competition,” Plaxton recalled.

     Plaxton had a brother, Roger, and a cousin, Bert, as teammates on the Grads squad.