Think it'll fly?

http://thehockeywriters.com/50-years-ag ... pansion-2/

Turk Sanderson wrote:Think it'll fly?

http://thehockeywriters.com/50-years-ag ... pansion-2/

Just think if there would have been a forum back then. We would have probably seen comments like this...

"I bet we win a Stanley cup before Pittsburgh, LA, Philly, or Minnesota"

NHLTIM wrote:

Turk Sanderson wrote:Think it'll fly?

http://thehockeywriters.com/50-years-ag ... pansion-2/

Just think if there would have been a forum back then. We would have probably seen comments like this...

"I bet we win a Stanley cup before Pittsburgh, LA, Philly, or Minnesota"

I think we still got a leg up on San Francisco though.

Campbell was asked what the price for an expansion franchise might be.

He replied, “I can’t say for sure, but this is no chicken feed deal. I would say this would be quite a few million in each city.

I agree with the guy from the Maple Leafs, there's absolutely no way Vancouver is getting an NHL club.

Wonder why Las Vegas wasn't mentioned. All those guys from Chicago owned the casinos then. Maybe they thought sand hockey wouldn't work.

Very interesting.

"The St. Louis Arena is owned by James Norris and Arthur Wirtz, owners of the Chicago Black Hawks. It is thought they would have no issue leasing the building to an NHL club."

Didn't they force the Solomon's to purchase the Arena in order to get the deal done?

Man in the box wrote:Very interesting.

"The St. Louis Arena is owned by James Norris and Arthur Wirtz, owners of the Chicago Black Hawks. It is thought they would have no issue leasing the building to an NHL club."

Didn't they force the Solomon's to purchase the Arena in order to get the deal done?

I wouldn't say they forced them to but if the Salomon's would not have agreed to buy the Arena I doubt if we would have received a franchise.

For one Wirtz would have probably voted against St Louis and two no way was the City (or County) of St Louis going to build an arena to play in.

Phil Esposito recalled his days playing for the St. Louis Braves of the CHL by saying the Arena was a dump.

In the locker room he'd cough up coal dust.

Battra wrote:Phil Esposito recalled his days playing for the St. Louis Braves of the CHL by saying the Arena was a dump.

In the locker room he'd cough up coal dust.

Well Espo was known as "The Garbage Man", soooo.....

Where I sat in the old arena the pidgons where friendly but they did complain about the rats between periods.

Great read, thanks for posting.

Fifty years later the conversation about expansion is still pretty much the same;

interlocking schedule, arena size, Portland isn't a big league city.

Thanks for posting. Interesting stuff. All I know is they will never put a team in florida or arizona.....

BluesSK wrote:Fifty years later the conversation about expansion is still pretty much the same;

interlocking schedule, arena size, Portland isn't a big league city.

This was a very good perspective piece from THW, but the writer only addresses the story from the NHL point-of-view. The other side is pretty thoroughly covered in a book that I just finished: "Ice Warriors: the Pacific Coast/Western Hockey League" by Jon C. Stott. Stott's research indicated that a major reason for all the NHL expansion talk in the first half of the 1960s was the minor pro Western Hockey League, whose owners were determined to elevate their status to major pro either on their own or by acceptance into the NHL. They became a big enough competitive business threat to the pre-expansion NHL owners - primarily by placing franchises in "big league cities" like L.A. and San Francisco/Oakland and Portland and Seattle and Vancouver - that the NHL was doing & saying everything they could to short circuit the WHL's growth plans. Turns out the WHL imploded under their own expansion weight & financial burdens by the early 70s, though they had influenced the first round of NHL expansion before that. And then the World Hockey Association carried the puck to the goal.