This is total BS, NHL ***** on Canadian teams, I think if this crap continues with the league Canadians should boycott NHL sponsors to make a stand. This isn't about the Torts thing but over the many many years the NHL has shown a bias and even Weekes said it tonight, wanna hurt the league than hurt their sponsors.
Vancouver fans did that when passed over in the original expansion. And it worked.
Stafford Smythe's deep-sixing the Canucks' entry to the NHL in 1967 with the help of Clarence Campbell after Vancouver rejected Smythe's attempts to build and control a new arena in Vancouver started the ball rolling. Smythe vowed to block any Vancouver entry to the NHL was the beginning:
Back in the middle of 1964, Toronto Maple Leafs’ president Stafford Smythe, seeking new ways to increase his cash inflow, mused that he might, just might, consider building an NHL-sized arena in Vancouver, if Vancouver would grant him free prime property in the downtown area. Smythe and his assistant, Harold Ballard, came to Vancouver to promote his plan.
Reaction in the city was split down the middle. Rabid hockey fans felt that no concession was too great if it meant an NHL franchise. But others differed. Some people were turned off by Smythe’s patronizing attitude. Others felt that the granting of free land was a blatant give-away to eastern interests.
There were even rumors, never confirmed, that Smythe planned to build a hotel complex and a dog-racing track on the site of the proposed rink.
At any rate, Smythe’s proposal was put to the public and was rejected. Smarting with indignation, Smythe said that he doubted if Vancouver would ever get into the NHL in his lifetime.
From The History of Hockey in B.C. by Denny Boyd
And then Clarence Campbell effectively blocked an attempt to relocate the California Golden Seals to Vancouver who were doing abysmally and hemorrhaging money. Campbell went out an found Charlie Finley (Oakland A's owner) and persuaded him to take the team. The Oakland Van Gerbig ownership group then launched an anti-trust case which was ultimately unsuccessful but the rationale would later be overturned by the NFL anti-trust suit launched by Al Davis.
It finally took David Molson of the Habs to intervene and overrule Campbell giving Vancouver its NHL franchise (along with Buffalo) in 1970. By that time Smythe had been ousted by John Basset as Leafs chairman in a power struggle that would ultimately see Harold Ballard oust Bassett several years later, was facing criminal charges and was ill (Smythe would subsequently die in 1971).
It was not entirely altruistic on David Molson's part as fans in BC had organized quite an effective boycott targeting Molson beer and ESSO (major NHL sponsors at the time) over the denial of an NHL franchise. There were a lot of very angry BC hockey fans.
From The History of Hockey in B.C. by Denny Boyd:
Vancouver’s reaction to the rejection and to Campbell’s words was one of boiling indignation. Hundreds of letters of protest were fired off to NHL headquarters. The sale of beer brewed by the family behind the Montreal Canadiens dropped sharply as did purchases of ESSO oil and gasoline bearing the name of the sponsor of Canadian NHL telecasts. Vancouver was a city spurned, and was acting accordingly.
The boycott was quite effective and David Molson (owned the Habs) basically told Campbell to pipe down about Vancouver and the BOG awarded franchises to Vancouver and Buffalo.
David Molson, a member of the NHL expansion committee, tempered the turn-down slightly when he said, “The league is committed to Vancouver. The next city, either through a new franchise or a franchise transfer, is Vancouver. If we expand again, it will have to be by two cities to facilitate scheduling. But when you have two weak sisters you have to be a little hesitant about going out and adding two unknowns.â€
The weak sisters he was referring to were Oakland and Pittsburgh, both of them deep in early financial straits and neither of them drawing solid and consistent spectator support.
While David Molson’s announcement had been the first genuinely positive indication that the NHL wanted Vancouver as badly as Vancouver wanted the NHL, his promise was verbally negated by Campbell who, in a hasty moment, said, “Vancouver won’t be in the league this year or next. You can count on that.â€
But the expansion committee, at the June, 1969 NHL meeting, partially provided a rebuttal to Campbell by announcing that the NHL would expand again in time for the 1970-71 season.
Stafford Smythe was little off in his timing as he died of a bleeding ulcer at the age of only 50 on October 13, 1971 - the year after Vancouver had entered the NHL.
And NHL hockey would finally come to the Wet Coast.
