DArcy Jenish - The NHL: 100 Years of On-Ice Action and Boardroom Battles

Copyright 2013 DArcy Jenish

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Jenish, DArcy, 1952-, author
The NHL : 100 years of on-ice action and boardroom battles / DArcy Jenish.

Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN: 978-0-385-67147-7

1. National Hockey LeagueHistory. I. Title.

GV847.8.N3J44 2013 796.96264 C2013-902640-1

Cover design: Andrew Roberts
Cover image: Focus on Sport / Getty Images

Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited

www.randomhouse.ca

v3.1

To Hlne

CONTENTS

A HISTORY OF THE N ATIONAL H OCKEY L EAGUE could be written as an account of games and seasons, wins and losses, triumphs and defeats. The writer could cast his or her gaze upon the coaches and general managers or the extraordinary athletes who blazed through opponents, lifted their teammates and won championships and seared on our psyches vivid memories of their sublime talents. Wereader and writercould focus on those great teams that extended their domination to three or more seasons and have come to be known as dynasties, and we would include in any such work the Ottawa Senators of the 1920s, the Leafs of the late forties and early sixties, the Red Wings of the early fifties, the Canadiens of the late fifties, late sixties and late seventies, and the Islanders and Oilers of the eighties. Histories devoted to any or all of these matters might be accurate, lively, even compelling, but they would be deficient.

Any work that purports to be a history of a league must recognize and take account of the two fundamental challenges of forming and operating such an entity. The first is to survive. The second is to grow. A thumbnail sketch of NHL history will suffice to demonstrate the truth of this observation. The league formed in the latter stages of World War I was a flimsy and fragile organization that struggled to find firm footing in turbulent, uncertain times.

This infant enterprise enjoyed a growth spurt in the Roaring Twenties, when American promoters from Boston, New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Detroit came north brandishing fistfuls of dollars and demanding entry, and it then endured a decade and a half of hard times and diminished fortunes during the Great Depression and World War II. It will come as a surprise to many that survival was very much an issue for much of the postwar Original Six era, which is oftenbut incorrectlyseen as a period of glorious competition, packed arenas and balance sheets engorged by record profits.

The year 1967 was the fulcrum on which the history of the league turned. It was the start of the second wave of expansionthe first was in the latter half of the twentiesand this second wave lasted till the year 2000. During those three-plus decades, the NHL grew from six to thirty teams, though there were countless crises, numerous failures and more than a few flops along the way. In short, some of the newly awarded franchises never found an audience. They cost their owners huge sums of money and they either moved or folded.

The NHL has awarded no new franchises in the first years of the twenty-first century, but it has never ceased to be preoccupied with growth: growing the leagues footprint in the U.S., especially the sunbelt states of the southern U.S.; growing live attendance and television audiences; growing sponsorships, advertising, merchandise sales and revenues.

These two central challengessurvival and growthare the business of league executives and the owners, the latter being a confederacy of competitors who form the board of governors. The student of the sport who sets out to write about their endeavours will inevitably encounter three major impediments. First, the principals from bygone eras are long since deceased. Second, those who are still with us are very often reluctant to talk. Finally, the NHL has in its possession a vast archival record, but stubbornly refuses to grant even the most limited access to outside researchers and writers.

Despite these impediments, many volumes have appeared in recent years that purported to tell us about the business of the NHL. Most have been speculative in naturebased more on rumour and anecdote than documents and verifiable factand most have been variations of the same doleful but compelling narrative. We have been told that the league has generally been comfortably profitable, and sometimes fabulously so. We have been told thatprior to the big-money era of the 1990s and 2000sthe players were badly paid and ruthlessly exploited. We have been told these things so often that they have acquired the weight and heft of conventional wisdom, which few will examine and even fewer question.

This work tells a different story. It challenges conventional wisdom. It is based on both firsthand accounts of participants and more NHL archival documents than any previous writer has ever used. Three chapters are built on unpublished verbatim transcripts of annual and semi-annual meetings of the board of governors between the years 1941 and 1957. These transcriptshitherto unseenare held in the archives of the Hockey Hall of Fame and give us the first accurate picture of the challenges and difficulties the league faced during the Original Six era.

These transcripts will give the reader a fly-on-the-wall perspective on the debates that took place within the inner sanctum of the NHL. We can hear Clarence Campbell, Conn Smythe, Frank Selke, Lester Patrick, Art Ross, James Norris and others speaking candidly and openly about the most difficult challenges they faced.

The transcripts will revealfor the first timethat the NHL considered expanding immediately after World War II and heard from delegations representing Los Angeles, San Francisco and Philadelphia. They reveal the gravity of the crisis facing the six-team league in the early- to mid-1950s when two of its franchisesChicago and Bostonwere in danger of folding. They depict owners and general managers attempting unsuccessfully to improve the competitive balance between the Canadiens, Wings and Leafs and the three weak clubsthe Rangers, Bruins and Hawks.

Readers will find here leaguewide regular-season and playoff gate receiptsyear by yearfrom 1946 to 1966. These figures are contained in confidential reports of Clarence Campbell to the board of governors, and the reports are stored in the Molson Fonds at the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa. These figures have never been published, though they should have been.