Wally Halder

With their gorgeous sweaters the 1948 Olympic champion RCAF Flyers have been increasingly more celebrated over the years. With a 7-0-1 record including 5 shutouts, they truly are golden.

Wally Halder was the scoring star of that tournament. His 21 goals in 8 games is simply unbelievable!

Canada needed those goals though. At that time goals for and against were commonly used tie breakers and such details needed to be adhered to. With a strong Czechoslovakia team also finishing 7-0-1 in the standings, Canada needed to make sure it scored as often as they could.

"We hated piling on the score," said Halder. "It runs against all Canadian ideals of sportsmanship. But we had to do it to stay in contention."

He was an amateur player who probably had what it took to make it to the NHL. Despite an appearance at the New York Rangers training camp in 1946, he never did make the jump. He happily captained the University of Toronto team instead, and went on to be a sales manager for Lowney Chocolates.