The birth of a franchise

The moment that gave Pittsburgh the transcendent talents of Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby, and the euphoria of four Stanley Cups, was not a fortuitous draft decision, contract negotiation or carefully assembled team-building blueprint; it was a three-day, behind-closed-doors meeting at a five-star hotel wedged at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 55th Street in midtown Manhattan.

It was then, at a gathering of the NHL board of governors in February 1966, that the most ambitious and potentially risky expansion plan in the history of major North American professional sports was permitted. The Pittsburgh Penguins and five other hockey franchises were born, and the league they were joining would never be close to the same.

The NHL’s expansion from six teams to 12 in the 1967 season gave birth to the Penguins, but on a larger scale, it forever altered the complexion of the world’s top hockey league, transforming it from a largely regional sport with pockets of popularity in the northeast, upper Midwest and Canada into a national commodity that would only continue to swell in size.

“The lasting impact of it was they finally got themselves out into areas of the country where they could push a national product,” former Penguins commentator and hockey historian Bob Grove said. “They could sell it to TV and to fans much more broadly. It set the table for them to have a discussion that, yes, this is Canada’s national game, but there are pockets of huge popularity in the United States. You can’t start telling that story and making it real until you’ve got enough teams spread around the league.”

As sharp and drastic as the change was, it was a product of several years of deliberations and conversations.

Beginning in 1942, when it shrunk due to World War II and the Great Depression, the NHL had just six teams — the Boston Bruins, Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, New York Rangers, Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings — the so-called “Original Six.”

That sextet remained for 25 years, but toward the end of that stretch, the anti-expansion sentiments began to thaw, largely because of external forces. In 1960, after its agreement with CBS expired, the NHL, unlike the NFL and MLB, didn’t have a TV contract and was told it wouldn’t be able to secure such a deal unless it expanded and reached a broader, national audience. There was pressure from the success of the Western Hockey League, a minor league with franchises in several major cities such as Vancouver, Seattle and Los Angeles. The WHL, to some, was seen as a viable threat to the NHL’s supremacy and popularity. The infusion of new, more progressive ownership within the NHL, from David Molson in Montreal to William Jennings in New York, also gave the league an internal push to grow.

In 1965, NHL president Clarence Campbell announced the league intended to expand, and one year later, after considering bids from 14 different ownership groups, the league announced the creation of a second six-team division that would include the Penguins, Philadelphia Flyers, St. Louis Blues, Los Angeles Kings, Minnesota North Stars and California Seals.

Even in some of the markets that received teams, the news came as a bit of a jolt.

“There was nothing in the papers in Philadelphia about the expansion plans of the National Hockey League,” said late Flyers owner Ed Snider in a documentary on NHL expansion. “As far as the papers here [were concerned], the National Hockey League didn’t even exist.”

With the move came certain fears. Even expansion proponents worried about the league doubling in size virtually overnight. There was also concern the league’s talent pool would be diluted, that there weren’t enough quality players to fill every roster.

“The decision by the National Hockey League to embrace six United States cities has a happy omen for scores of hockey players now down in the minor leagues or on the junior farm,” Hal Walker of the Calgary Herald wrote in response to expansion. “This means a lot of the skaters who had little or no chance of making the current six-team NHL will be absorbed by the new teams and their salaries will be at the major league level.”

The transition didn’t come seamlessly. The Penguins were in the process of being sold before their first season was even complete. The North Stars, despite being located in hockey-mad Minnesota, struggled to consistently draw large crowds. Most humorously, part of the Spectrum’s roof in Philadelphia was blown off in 1968, forcing the Flyers to play their final month of games on the road.