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Hap Holmes

Canadian ice hockey player (1892–1941)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ2383100
Source-derived summary

Harry George "Hap" Holmes (February 21, 1888 – June 27, 1941) was a Canadian professional ice hockey player. A goaltender, Holmes won the Stanley Cup four times, with four teams. He tied the record of his 1914 Stanley Cup winning Toronto Blueshirts teammate Jack Marshall, who also won Cups with four teams. No other player has duplicated this record.

Holmes played as an amateur for three seasons with the Parkdale Canoe Club of the Ontario Hockey Association (OHA) from 1908 to 1911, before joining the professional Toronto Blueshirts of the National Hockey Association (NHA) in 1912–13. Holmes won the first of his four Stanley Cups in 1914. Although being under contract to the Blueshirts, Holmes joined the Seattle Metropolitans of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) for the 1915–16 season, winning his second Stanley Cup (1917) in his second season with the Metropolitans. For the 1917–18 season, Holmes ended up playing for the Torontos (the following year renamed as the Toronto Arenas) of the National Hockey League (NHL) through a series of loans by other teams. Holmes won his third Stanley Cup in his only full season with the Torontos. After playing two games in the 1918–19 season for the Toronto Arenas, Holmes was recalled by the Metropolitans.

Editorial summary

“Hap Holmes” enters the record as canadian ice hockey player (1892–1941). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Holmes, Canadian and hockey can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1888, 1941, 1914, 1908—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1892-02-21, 1888-02-21—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Holmes, Canadian and hockey.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Hap Holmes” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Holmes, Canadian and hockey provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2383100. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1888, 1941, 1914 and 1908.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Hap Holmes”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Hap Holmes primary sources, Hap Holmes archive and Holmes research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Hap Holmes”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Hap Holmes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.