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Millionaires vs Miners - First Game Ever
Sydney's 1915 season began in New Glasgow with a 5 to 4 loss to the Black Foxes. The Millionaires team featured many new faces along with some older ones. The new players included Roy Bentley, a local man from Sydney, Marcel Beliveau, from Moncton, New Brunswick who started the season with the Montreal Canadiens, Clarence Demont and Bob Maclean, two local boys who were used as spares. Two nights later, the Millionaires were able to seek revenge on the Black Foxes and defeat them by a score of 10 to 5 behind the very good goaltending of Toby Macdonald. This game also featured a few new local boys in the line up including Alex Macdonald, Bert Publicover and Hector MacKenzie who had played in the 1913 season with the Millionaires before his arm was broken. The following night in Glace Bay, the Miners easily defeated the Black Foxes 10 to 2. Both the New Glasgow and Sydney teams realized that Glace Bay had the strongest line up of players and began looking for new players to strengthen their own squad.
In late January, the Millionaires got into a bidding war over a player out of Lakeview Corner, New Brunswick named Fred Mclean. Mclean was a large man at six foot two weighing one hundred and eighty-five pounds. Mclean previously played in Fredericton and was the star of the Fredericton Capitols of the New Brunswick hockey league. According to reports, Mclean was very fast on his skates and was a superb stick handler who had a wicked shot. Sydney was able to win the bidding war for Mclean and he joined the team for the January 22nd game against the Glace Bay Miners.
Big news in Industrial Cape Breton was the first scheduled game between the Sydney Millionaires and the Glace Bay Miners. This game was to be the beginning of a rivalry between two teams that would last several decades in many different leagues. The Miners were set to play the Millionaires on Monday, January 22nd in Sydney and Tuesday, January 23rd in Glace Bay. The original schedule of Friday night games in Sydney and Saturday night games in Glace Bay were dropped because of a Black Foxes objection about their team being away from home for eight consecutive weekends. From all accounts the first meeting of these two teams exceeded expectation with a hard and fast game decided in the last 10 minutes of play. Glace Bay, with the strong play of Jimmy Fraser and Andy Kyle were able to defeat the Millionaires by a score of five to three in front of a large shocked and disappointed crowd in Sydney.
The following night, in the Alexandra Arena in Glace Bay, the Miners again defeated the Millionaires by a score of 6 to 3. The Miners were strengthened by the signing of Con Corbeau who had played defense for the Stanley Cup Champions Toronto Blueshirts the previous year. Corbeau had been playing with the Canadiens and looked as if he would stay with the NHA club when he left for Cape Breton. Speculation was that the Miners offered Corbeau a "bunch of long green to attract him to Cape Breton at this stage of the season" The Millionaires next game was in New Glasgow and again they were defeated and were sitting at the bottom of the standings of the three team league.