Back when I was young, there were two types of
boys. The tough kids spent the money they bullied out of the good kids on candy and gum.
These were the kids with bad attitudes — and bad teeth. As for me, I was one of those
good kids. I spent every penny earned from carting out the garbage each Tuesday on hockey
cards. By the end of a season, I usually had a complete set of 66 O-Pee-Chee hockey cards
and a stack of uneaten, rock-hard bubble gum.
Kids haven’t changed much, but hockey cards certainly have.
O-Pee-Chee’s barely palatable gum is gone. And now hockey card sets are 500 to 800
big, and that covers only the NHL’s stars. Buying cards the old way, one pack at a
time, it can take over $500 to complete a set, now. How much garbage does a kid have to
haul to the curb to make that kind of cash?
To heck with high salaries
and fighting. The real problem with hockey lies in the fact that hockey card sets are
nearing 1,000 cards. There are way too many teams (30 at last count, but maybe more for
all I know) and too few players (talented ones, anyway) to stock them. The NHL is full of
roster-fillers. I knew more players by name and number way back when the Leafs last won
the Stanley Cup than I do now. And I was only six, then.
If the NHL was once able to flourish with only six teams, how is
it that it needs six divisions now?
A little history lesson might help shed some light on the answer to this question.
Originally, the National Hockey League was a
casual association of independent amateur clubs that had banded together to organize a
common schedule. Initially membership was secured with a handshake but the gentlemanly
nature of the game quickly gave way to business as it became obvious that spectators would
willingly pay to watch hockey. This was especially true if a winning team could be
assembled by someone with sufficient wealth to pay the best players. These salaries could
be financed by charging the fans admission.
From the beginning, the ‘league’ itself was little more
than an administration whose only purpose was to draft game schedules. The owners of the
six teams were the power behind the league, and greed, not sportsmanship, was their
driving force. Team owners often postponed or canceled hockey games when other more
lucrative sources of revenue (a circus or boxing match) could be arranged. The owners did
this without even consulting the league administration. When one man owns both the players
and the arena, the NHL need not be asked if it agrees with the decision. Then, as now,
team owners no more needed NHL approval than a fly-by-night bookie needs the approval of
the Better Business Bureau.
To gain control over its own affairs, the NHL proposed that new
blood be added to the league. Officially, expansion would bring the game to more people.
Confidentially, new team owners with an allegiance to the league would weaken the
all-powerful six. (Actually there were only four owners since Boston, Detroit and Chicago
were all owned by the Norris family, despite an effete league-mandated rule preventing
multiple team ownership.) In 1966, NHL president Clarence Campbell proposed doubling the
size of the league to 12 teams. To get the existing owners to agree, Campbell proposed
that the new teams pay an entrance fee, to be shared by the existing owners to compensate
for some vague ‘loss of territory’ conditions. The owners would also receive
additional cash compensation for the third and fourth stringers sent to the new clubs to
form new teams. How could the Original Six owners refuse?
One would have expected Campbell to choose names like Vancouver,
Edmonton, Calgary or perhaps even Halifax. But instead the teams chosen were in
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh (both which had lost NHL teams in the 1920s), St. Louis,
Minneapolis, Oakland and Los Angeles. Why would such a patriotic Canadian war hero go for
a US sweep? Surely three or four Canadian teams would have been just as grateful to
Campbell as any American teams.
Aside from being All-Americans, the six Western Expansion
teams had two common bonds. One: None of these cities wanted to be in the NHL. Oakland
didn’t even have an arena! Two: The new teams filled in gaping ‘market’
holes in the US midwest and west. With these broadcast holes filled, the NHL could become
a more attractive commodity to the US’s three national TV networks.
Not surprisingly, the Oakland team collapsed. Californians, most of whom had never seen ice, except in a cocktail, didn’t take to the game. Canadian brewer, Labatt’s, proposed moving the team to Vancouver, but by that time, the NHL had caught expansion fever. Vancouver was invited to field a team of its own. The Oakland (then California, then Oakland, again) franchise failed in 1978 (after a brief stint in Cleveland) and was never replaced. Despite its abject failure, the NHL continued to grow. Through the 1970s, the league nearly doubled its size again, tallying 21 teams by the end of the decade.
The Western Expansion of 1968 does deserve one positive footnote. The new entry draft, instituted to man the new teams, ended the age-old farm team system that had traditionally provided Detroit, Montreal and Toronto with ‘territorial protection’. The draft selection permitted a more balanced distribution of young talent in future years.
On to: Southward Expansion