Pittsburgh Professionals

During the 1902–03 WPHL season, the league champion Pittsburgh Bankers competed against the Portage Lakes Hockey Club, which was based in Houghton, Michigan, for the "Pro Championship of the United States".

[2] The next season, Portage Lakes continued to play professional exhibition games, but raided Pittsburgh's teams for top players like Riley Hern and Bruce Stuart.

[5] Also at this meeting, the representatives of the Canadian Soo suggested a revenue sharing plan that would divide gate receipts in a 60–40 home-visitor split.

This revenue sharing plan would make the long journey to Pittsburgh possible, considering the Pros played at the high capacity (5,000 seats) Duquesne Garden.

While civic boosters helped drive the interest in the games in Michigan and Canada, Pittsburgh used its large population base and established hockey tradition to fill its arena.

Duval had been suspended in December 1904 without pay by the Pros for not being in condition to play[6] although he returned to the team in time to score the winning goal in a game against Calumet on January 7, 1905.

[12] However the Pittsburgh line-up still included the recent addition of several notable players such as; Tommy Smith and Horace Gaul of the Ottawa Hockey Club and Jimmy Gardner of the Montreal Wanderers.

Campbell and Smith finished ahead of future Hall-Of-Famers; Didier Pitre, Newsy Lalonde and Bruce Stuart in scoring.