inaugural year. Vancouver traded him back to Montreal the following season for Didier Pitre. In 1915, Lalonde held out in contract negotiations, only playing six games, but aside from that, he remained with the Canadiens for the next ten years, winning the NHA scoring title again in 1916 and captaining the Canadiens to his only Stanley Cup victory. Despite his holdout, he was named player-coach of the Canadiens in 1915. NHL/WCHL career Newsy Lalonde played (and scored) in the first NHL game on December 19, 1917, when the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Ottawa Senators, 7–4. He would score in each of the first six NHL games, a mark that would stand unchallenged for the rest of the century. During the 1919 Stanley Cup playoffs, Lalonde scored seventeen goals in ten games. However, on the day of the sixth game of the finals against the Seattle Metropolitans, Lalonde, owner George Kennedy, Joe Hall, Billy Coutu, Jack McDonald and Louis Berlinguette were hospitalized with influenza, in the wave of the 1918 flu pandemic. Five and a half hours before its start, the game was postponed. With his entire team either hospitalized or confined to bed, Kennedy announced he was forfeiting the game—and the Cup—to the Metropolitans. However, the Metropolitans felt it would be unsporting to accept the trophy under the circumstances, and the sixth game was never played. Hall did not survive. Thereafter Lalonde had two fine years, but after the Kennedy estate sold the Canadiens to Leo Dandurand, his clashes with the new ownership affected his play to the point where he left the team for four games, and he was relegated to reserve duty amidst the boos of the fans. Saskatoon Crescents' manager Frederick E. Betts sought to sign Lalonde as the team's player-coach for the season, and was willing to buy Lalonde's release pending all other National Hockey League clubs waiving their right to claim Lalonde. Dandurand and Betts later agreed to trade the rights to highly-touted prospect Aurèle Joliat to bring Lalonde to the Crescents. (When Lalonde and Joliat met later that season, Lalonde, unhappy that Joliat was fast becoming a fan favorite in Montreal, got his "revenge" by serving Joliat with a vicious crosscheck to the face). On a line with future Hall of Famer Bill Cook, Lalonde achieved his final scoring title as playing coach of the Sheiks, although the team had a poor overall record.