a small town, they were unable to build a large enough rink, let alone attract the crowds to fill it and raise revenue. The promise of a larger arena, suggested in the wake of the club's Stanley Cup championship, would have been impossible to realize since it would have required the entire town to attend games to sell it out. Compounding the issue was a major economic downturn in the region starting as early as 1905, mining in particular seeing a major collapse. This coincided with the establishment of professional ice hockey leagues across Canada. Along with the Manitoba league, the ECAHA turned fully professional in 1907. The Ontario Professional Hockey League was established the same year and, in 1911, the Pacific Coast Hockey League began in British Columbia. These developments meant the Thistles had to compete with a multitude of teams for players who were being offered higher salaries. As a result, sports historian John Wong has suggested it was unlikely that the Thistles could compete for top-rated players with clubs in larger cities and remain secure financially. Legacy Kenora remains the smallest town to win the Stanley Cup, and a major North American professional championship. The Thistles' two months as Stanley Cup champions is also the shortest length of time a team has possessed the Cup. Four homegrown Thistles—Si Griffis, Tom Hooper, Billy McGimsie, and Tommy Phillips—were later inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. The five players signed for their 1907 Cup challenges—Art Ross and Joe Hall from January; Alf Smith, Harry Westwick, and Fred Whitcroft—would also be inducted. The January 1907 Stanley Cup champion team were themselves elected to the Northwestern Ontario Sports Hall of Fame in 1982. Lappage has noted that during their existence, the Thistles were romanticized in the press "as a team of hometown boys who used to play shinny together on the streets of Rat Portage". That players from the town were responsible for most of the team's success was respected. Further, the players remained active in the community outside hockey. Most took up local jobs, while in the summer several played other sports, particularly rowing—Griffis competed at the 1905 Royal Canadian Henley Regatta—and baseball. The team also helped promote Kenora to a wider audience: as a booming town at the turn of the century, town officials were excited by the publicity the Thistles' success brought. Sports historian Stacey L. Lorenz has