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The National Hockey League
The National Hockey League was founded in 1917 after a series of disputes within the Canadian National Hockey Association (NHA). The first NHL season began in 1917-18 with five teams.
The primary conflict involved Toronto Blueshirts owner Edward J. Livingstone. An ongoing source of controversy among fellow NHA owners, he was often accused of exploiting loopholes in league regulations to create what some viewed as unfair advantages, and had particularly incited the wrath of owners when he merged his two Toronto teams (the Ontarios and the Blueshirts) after the latter had been deprived of its top players. Livingstone sometimes offered contracts to other teams' members not to play hockey, and once campaigned to kick the Montreal Wanderers out of the league after the team tried to lure two of his top Blueshirts players. Throughout his battles with owners, Livingstone repeatedly threatened to start a rival league in the United States.
In its final season (1916-17), the National Hockey Association was comprised of six teams: The Montreal Canadians, Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa Senators, Quebec Bulldogs, Toronto Blueshirts, and an army team from the Toronto based 228th Battalion. Owners met in Montreal to consider the league's future on February 11, 1917, a day after members of the 228th Battalion, the most popular NHA team, were called into World War I action. Livingstone, unable to attend the meeting because of illness, was shocked to learn that owners had chosen to effectively eject him and the Blueshirts from the NHA.
After the resignation of NHA president and Livingstone ally Frank Robinson, Livingstone stopped attending league meetings and sent a lawyer to represent his interests. When owners convened on September 29, 1917, they demanded that Livingstone sell the Blueshirts within five days. Livingstone then negotiated a deal in which the Toronto Arena Gardens would take control of the Blueshirts' daily business with Livingstone, to eventually regain control if the NHA continued operations. In response, NHA owners met at Montreal's Windsor Hotel on November 26, 1917 and formed the National Hockey League, with the Canadians, Wanderers, Senators, Bulldogs and newly-renamed Toronto Arenas as founding members.
The NHL endured a rocky inaugural season in 1917-18, starting with the temporary shuttering of the Bulldogs. On January 2, 1918, the Westmount Arena in Montreal, home to the Wanderers and Canadians, was destroyed in a fire. The Wanderers, already a shadow of its former self, folded in the wake of the fire, ending one of the most storied franchises in the early years of Canadian professional hockey. With the Bulldogs and Wanderers out, the NHL operated with just three teams for the remainder of its opening year, and through the second season. Though Livingstone had been shut out, one of his NHA ideas — a proposal for a split regular season — was adopted by the new league and integrated into its playoff system. The Toronto Arenas became the first NHL winner of the Stanley Cup, the annual trophy awarded since 1894 to the Canadian hockey champion. A furious Livingstone, meanwhile, failed in his attempt to collect a share of profits from the Arenas, then sued the team and the NHL. The dispute lingered through the 1930s, with the Arenas since renamed the Toronto St. Patricks and ultimately the Toronto Maple Leafs. History has looked back on Livingstone and the NHL's formation with a sense of irony: The man whom league owners had worked so hard to exclude was, in the words of Canadiens owner George Kennedy, the same figure that "made [the NHL] a real league".
Though the league struggled to stay in the business during its first decade, NHL teams were quite successful on the ice, winning the Stanley Cup seven out of its first nine years. (The 1918-19 competition was cancelled because of the Spanish Flu epidemic that had hit Seattle). By 1926, having increased player salaries to a level that couldn't be matched by other Canadian leagues, the NHL was alone in Stanley Cup competition. The league had also expanded into the United States, with the Boston Bruins in 1924, the New York Americans and the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1925 and the New York Rangers, Detroit Cougars (later to become the Red Wings), and Chicago Blackhawks in 1926. By the end of the 1930-31 season, the NHL featured a total of 10 teams. However, the Great Depression took a toll on the league. Teams such as the Pirates and the Americans folded, and even the fabled Ottawa Senators were forced to fold after moving to St. Louis because of financial difficulties. With these developments and the onset of World War II, the NHL was reduced to six teams during its 25th anniversary year of (1942) – six teams still known today, if somewhat inaccurately, as the Original Six: The Canadians, Maple Leafs, Red Wings, Bruins, Rangers, and Blackhawks. World War II had provided many players their first chance to play professional hockey, but after the war, many found themselves relegated to minor leagues.
Expansion: 1967 and Beyond
Minor leagues, especially in the western United States, often fielded teams that arguably could have defeated Stanley Cup champions. The rise of the Western Hockey League, which many pundits thought planned to transform into a major league and challenge for the Stanley Cup, spurred the NHL in 1967 to undertake its first expansion since the 1920s. Six new teams were added to the NHL roster and placed in their own newly-created division. They were the Philadelphia Flyers, St. Louis Blues, Minnesota North Stars, Los Angeles Kings, Oakland Seals, and Pittsburgh Penguins. Three years later, the NHL added the Vancouver Canucks and Buffalo Sabres as franchises.
In 1972, the World Hockey Association (WHA) was formed. Though it never challenged for the Stanley Cup, its status as a viable NHL rival was unquestionable. In response to that, the NHL decided to rush its own expansion plans by adding the New York Islanders and Atlanta Flames that year, along with the Kansas City Scouts and Washington Capitals two years later. The dilution of the talent pool, however, caused the overall quality of play to suffer. Additionally, the rising dominance of Soviet-style hockey revealed stark differences in the relatively lesser abilities of the mostly Canadian players who made up the NHL and WHA. The two leagues fought for the services of hockey players and fans until the WHA folded in 1979. Four of the remaining six WHA teams merged with the NHL: The Hartford Whalers, Québec Nordiques, Edmonton Oilers, and Winnipeg Jets. The Edmonton Oilers, as of 2005, are the last remaining WHA franchise to still be in the city where they began in the NHL.
The NHL continued to expand in the two decades that followed, and in 2000 reached its present total of 30 teams. Though hockey remained popular in Canada , the sports popularity in the United States, especially in the American south, dwindled to the point where many considered hockey to be a minor sport compared with the American staples of baseball, basketball and football.
Labor Issues
There have been three work stoppages in NHL history. The first was a strike by the National Hockey League Players Association (NHLPA) in April 1992, which lasted for 10 days. (Though the strike began towards the season's end, it was settled quickly enough for affected games to be rescheduled.)
A lockout at the start of the 1994-95 season proved far more disruptive, lasting three months and forcing the league to reduce the schedule from 84 to 48 games. Teams played exclusively intra-conference games during the lockout-shortened season. The resulting collective bargaining agreement (CBA) was set for renegotiation in 1998, and the agreement was eventually extended to last until September 15, 2004.
Negotiations for a new agreement, launched in 2004 to replace the expiring 1995 deal, turned into one of the most contentious collective bargaining sessions in the history of professional sports. The league vowed to install what it dubbed "cost certainty" for its teams. The NHLPA countered that the move was little more than a euphemism for a salary cap, which the union initially said it would not accept. With no new agreement in hand when the existing contract expired on September 15, 2004, league commissioner Gary Bettman announced a lockout of the players union and cessation of operations by the NHL head office. Eventually, the 2004-05 NHL season was cancelled, and the NHL became the first major North American sports league in history to lose an entire season because of labor disputes. In July 2005, a new collective bargaining agreement was ratified, allowing the NHL to resume in the 2005-06 season.
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