It's time for the National Hockey League to repay its debt to Hamilton.Ironically, it was a "distress sale" from Hamilton more than 80 years ago that paved the way for the NHL to make it big in the United States. How unbecoming that the NHL continues to fixate on demonstrably unviable hockey markets in the Southern U.S. (come on! Atlanta? Columbus? Florida? Nashville? These are hockey markets, but somehow, Quebec, Winnepeg, Saskatchewan and Manitoba aren't??) rather than return to the Canadian city that contributed – and sacrificed – so much for the NHL in the past.
The story of how NHL hockey moved from Hamilton to New York in 1925 proved to be the single most important franchise relocation in league history. It also illustrates why the NHL's future lies in going retro now, and returning to Hamilton.
In the summer of 1925, New York's most prominent Prohibition-era bootlegger, "Big Bill" Dyer, purchased the NHL's top team – the Hamilton Tigers. They played the 1925-26 season in Manhattan, and hockey has been a fixture at Madison Square Garden ever since. The team's success on Broadway convinced other American cities that hockey was for them, too.
No contest – the Hamilton Tigers are the best NHL team to never have won the Stanley Cup. They were the first-place team following the 1924-25 regular season. Twenty per cent of the roster (Billie Burch and Shorty Green) from what were then ten-player squads made it into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Perhaps the best tribute to the Tigers came from manager Tommy Gorman of the rival Ottawa Senators, who described the Hamilton team as "a magnificent hockey machine."
The Hamilton Tigers lost their championship chance in March 1925, when the then league president summarily disqualified the club from the Stanley Cup playoffs. Hamilton seems to have a bad track record with NHL presidents! This is the only time in NHL history that an entire team was disqualified and all its players suspended.
What was their transgression? The team players had gone on strike to protest what they regarded as unfair salary treatment that year. That, too, was connected to southern expansion of the league.
Fearing the start-up of a rival league in the U.S., the NHL began looking to move south in the 1920s. Founded in 1917 as a four-team Canadian league, the NHL had its first expansion in the 1924-25 season. A second team was added in Montreal (the Maroons), and the addition of the Boston Bruins brought the first American city into the league. To accommodate the larger number of teams, the league schedule was increased from 24 to 30 games.
Players, however, were not pleased about playing 25 per cent more games with no additional salary. Nor were they too happy with the league's announcement that players would receive no share of playoff game revenues. At the end of the regular season, all Hamilton players served notice they would not suit up for a playoff game unless paid to play.
The NHL's first president, Frank Calder, set an autocratic tone that seems to have remained a job requirement ever since. The Hamilton team and its players were summarily terminated. Calder also made it plain that the owners' finances came before the players, the fans or even the game itself. Any concession to the striking players, he declared, would jeopardize the owners' "large capital investment in rinks and arenas and this capital must be protected."
Meanwhile, in Manhattan finishing touches were being put on a new 18,000 seat Madison Square Garden. The building needed to maximize bookings; the NHL was looking for prime American locations. In the summer of 1925 the Hamilton franchise – complete with players, equipment and uniforms – was sold to New York buyers.
The Hamilton Tigers opened the 1925-26 NHL season, As the New York Americans. They were a box office hit! Not for the last time, hockey was sold to American fans more for its fierceness than finesse. The Daily News described the sport as a confrontation between "men with clubs in their hands and knives lashed to their feet."
The transplanted Tigers were such a hit on Broadway that the NHL quickly expanded to other U.S. cities. When the NHL started its 1926-27 season, it was a 10-team league, with six clubs in the U.S. This included a second team playing out of Madison Square Garden – the New York Rangers.
Today the NHL is a 30-team league with only six Canadian clubs. The Phoenix Coyotes' filing for bankruptcy proves the NHL's geography is no longer sustainable.
At least half a dozen teams, most scattered across the American south, are in financial distress. Research In Motion CEO Jim Balsillie is looking to relocate the Phoenix team to Hamilton. Turning Coyotes back into Tigers is not only overdue recognition of what Hamilton gave the NHL in the past, but also recognition of what Hamilton (and other Canadian cities) can do for the NHL in the future.
The time has come for the NHL to pay its dues....
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