The Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup for the third consecutive season, defeating the Boston Bruins four games to two in the best-of-seven final series.
Doug Harvey and Ted Lindsay led the drive to form (on February 11, 1957) the National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA), a workers' labour association, and sued the NHL over the issue of player pensions, salaries during training camp, meal allowances, remuneration for exhibition games and a no-trade clause after six years service.
[1] Lindsay lost his captaincy of the Detroit Red Wings and was traded to Chicago, on July 23, 1957, in an effort to intimidate the players.
First, they traded Lindsay to Chicago to separate him from the Red Wings, the American team the NHLPA had targeted for a certification vote.
The NHLPA had applied, in Canada, to the Ontario Labour Relations Board for certification, but the ORLB had no experience with workers like hockey players.
[5] The League, and especially Conn Smythe, argued that players were forming a "trade union" and were no better than "commies" and would lose things like individual bonuses.
The OLRB was taking time, and no one knew how this transnational association would work, or how it would be recognized by the US National Labor Relations Board.
[8] In fact, the NLRB asked the NHLPA to withdraw its unfair labor practices charge on November 20, 1957, arguing it did not have jurisdiction.
Led by Conn Smythe, the league appealed to cultural bonds of loyalty and tradition as justifications for retaining the existing economic structure of labor-management relations, long after other industries had been forced by the state to move toward formal, union-led collective bargaining arrangements.
Glenn Hall, after two playoff years in which the Wings were eliminated, was traded, along with Ted Lindsay to the Chicago Black Hawks and Terry Sawchuk was brought back to Detroit in a deal that saw Larry Hillman and Johnny Bucyk go to Boston.
Two contenders for the Calder Memorial Trophy, Chicago's Bobby Hull and the Toronto Maple Leafs' Frank Mahovlich, battled all season for rookie honours.