Professional Hockey

PROFESSIONAL HOCKEY

Parity

As it had through much of the previous decade, the National Hockey League (NHL) during the 1970s suffered from shrinking attendance, yet the league continued its aggressive program of expansion begun in the late 1960s, when the NHL doubled in size from six teams to twelve. By 1975 the league had grown to eighteen teams, and NHL owners and officials were predicting even further expansion. As the game moved from the snowbelt to exotic places such as Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Kansas City, many sportswriters and longtime hockey fans feared that the quality of play would diminish. With each team added the talent became more thinly spread across the league. The magic word among NHL officials, however, was parity—a word soon echoed in other professional sports circles. The NHL looked forward to the day when each of its teams was a legitimate Stanley Cup contender, and, hence, when each of its teams was a viable moneymaker.

WHA

At the beginning of the decade, however, the NHL's state of affairs appeared dismal to the league's numbers crunchers. Far from introducing parity to the NHL, the expansion clubs were whipping boys at the hands of the established clubs. Furthermore, the venerable league found itself faced off with a competing organization when in July 1971 two California entrepreneurs, Dennis Murphy and Gary Davidson, helped create the World Hockey Association (WHA). Murphy and Davidson had been involved in the American Basketball Association—the National Basketball Association's upstart rival—and were savvy sports promoters.

Signings

The WHA was soon signing NHL players willing to defect. In June 1972 the new league landed its first superstar when the Winnipeg Jets paid Bobby Hull a $1 million bonus to sign a ten-year contract worth $2.75 million. Hull's contract marked the beginning of bidding wars between the two leagues, and as players' salaries rose the financial hardships were more severely felt by many teams from both the NHL and WHA. Nevertheless, the WHA continued in its high-profile pursuit of big-name players. In 1973 the WHA's Houston Aeros signed forty-six-year-old hockey legend Gordie Howe and his two teenage sons, Mark and Marty, in what many disgruntled NHL fans dismissed as nothing more than a glitzy publicity stunt. The signings attracted the fans' attention, however, and the Aeros went on to win the WHL championship trophy, the Avco Cup (named for a finance company), twice.

Merger

As early as 1973 owners and officials representing the rival leagues had been holding secret meetings to discuss a merger. But a deal between the NHL and WHA was not reached until 1979, when the WHA agreed to discontinue operations. By that year the WHA had dwindled from a league high of fourteen teams in 1974-1975—when fan interest in the new league was at its peak—to eight, and expatriated NHL players had begun to drift back to their former league in search of job security. For the 1979-1980 season the NHL expanded to twenty-one teams when it added four former WHA franchises: the Edmonton Oilers, the Hartford (formerly New England) Whalers, the Quebec Nordiques, and the Winnipeg Jets.

The Big Bad Bruins

During the early and mid 1960s, the Boston Bruins had been a basement team. At the beginning of the decade the Big Bad Bruins, as they were affectionately called by their fans, were residing at the top of the NHL standings and along with teams such as the New York Rangers represented a youth movement in hockey. The Bruins of the early and mid 1970s were indeed big and bad, as their rugged, blue-collar style of hockey emphasized hard checking punctuated by the whippy slap-shot attack of superstars Phil Esposito and Bobby Orr, the brilliant defenseman whose aggressive style of play revolutionized his position.

Lunch Pail Gang

Bruins coach Harry Sinden was once told, "You don't have a team; you have a gang." Indeed, the Bruins during this period brought to mind baseball's Gas House Gang—the Saint Louis Cardinals of the 1930s—for their color, swagger, and talent. They won the Stanley Cup in 1970 and 1972—and reached the finals in 1971 and 1974—before one of hockey's most stunning trades ended the era of the Big Bad Bruins. In 1975 Esposito was sent to the New York Rangers in exchange for three younger players. At the beginning of the 1975-1976 season Orr had undergone knee surgery, and the great defenseman's career was suddenly in doubt. The Big Bad Bruins, however, were soon replaced by an equally colorful cast of characters, known as the Bruins' Lunch Pail Athletic Club. The Lunch Pail Gang reasserted the Bruins' blue-collar image and the organization's place among hockey's elite teams when Boston returned to the Stanley Cup finals in 1979.

The Broad Street Bullies

By the end of the 1972-1973 season the Philadelphia Flyers seemed to be emerging as the team that would turn the dreams of proexpansion NHL officials into reality. In their successful drive to become the first expansion team to win a Stanley Cup, however, the Flyers, alias the Broad Street Bullies, became the living nightmare of most NHLers, as the Bullies' bloody-knuckled style of hockey, based on Flyers coach Fred Shero's creed, "If you can't beat 'em in the alley, you can't beat 'em on the ice," terrorized the league. Former Buffalo and Vancouver defenseman Mike Robitaille once tried to sum up the feelings of dread shared by hockey players visiting the Spectrum, the Flyers' home ice located on Broad Street in South Philadelphia's dour industrial section: "Whenever I walked through that big, black door leading into the visiting locker room …I thought I was walking through the gates of hell."

Philadelphia Flu

Upon arriving in the City of Brotherly Love, key players on visiting teams were suddenly struck down with mysterious illnesses, which collectively and commonly became known as the Philadelphia Flu. The Bullies' list of exploits during the decade read like a motorcycle gang's rap sheet, as the team racked up penalty minutes for rowdiness on the ice and court appearances for creating mayhem off it; more than once Flyers charged into the stands to brawl with heckling fans. Out on the ice the Bullies were charged with an astounding 1,750 penalty minutes, a record 600 of which were earned by Bullies enforcer Dave ("The Hammer") Schultz. In a postgame interview Flyers defenseman Andre ("Moose") Dupont, with cigarette and beer in hand, summed up what had become a typical day at work for the Broad Street Bullies: "It was a good day for us. We didn't go to jail, we beat up their chicken forwards, we scored goals, and we won. Now, the Moose drinks beer."

Popularity

The Flyers' reign over the NHL with their 1974 and 1975 Stanley Cup victories was not solely the product of their thuggery. Flyers captain Bobby Clarke, a diabetic with a choirboy's face, was a prolific goal scorer, a brilliant passer of the puck, and one of the finest centers in the league. Rick MacLeish's breakaway speed was another potent offensive weapon, and Flyers goalie Bernie Parent was at the heart of one of the stingiest defenses in professional hockey. To many NHL insiders the Flyers' flawless execution of Shero's system was more intimidating than their back-checking and flailing fists. Yet to compete with the Broad Street Bullies many NHL teams felt that they had to adopt their questionable tactics. Furthermore, the fighting seemed to attract new fans to the sport, for there was little doubt that the Broad Street Bullies, although despised by opposing teams, sold seats. The role of the enforcer became a common part of hockey during the 1970s, and key opposing players became the targets of on-the-ice muggings. As a result players were facing off in the courtroom.

Bullying The Soviets

Among sportswriters and critics there seemed to be little doubt that the classic style of hockey, which emphasized speed and finesse, had been replaced by something more akin to professional wrestling. Nowhere was this better illustrated than in the 1976 exhibition game between the Flyers and the Soviet Red Army team. The Soviets were simply the greatest practitioners of the classic European style. But the Bullies, uninterested in the Soviets' speed and deft puck handling, simply beat them up and chased them off the ice. The Red Army coach only returned his team to the ice after officials threatened to withold payment from the Soviets.

A New Era

Just when many were writing off hockey as spectacle rather than sport, the Montreal Canadiens reemerged as the class act of the NHL. Lacking the size and brawn of the Broad Street Bullies, the Canadiens nevertheless went on a streak of four straight Stanley Cup wins, beginning in 1976. Montreal hockey emphasized speed and the brilliant offensive play of Guy Lafleur. Gradually, other NHL teams such as the New York Islanders were trading and drafting for speed rather than size. The return to the classical style of hockey was furthered by the 1979 merger of the two leagues and the introduction of former WHA scoring star Wayne Gretzky to the NHL. In 1978 at the age of seventeen, Gretzky had signed with the WHA Indianapolis Racers, and when the Racers organization went broke in the following year, his contract was purchased by the Edmonton Oilers. When the Oilers became an NHL team following the merger, many felt that the teenage phenomenon would prove too small to compete. In his first season he scored fifty-one goals and had eighty-six assists, and in so doing ushered in a new era for hockey.