Canucks ct

IT may be of no conso-
lation to hockey fans in
Pittsburgh if the bank-
rupt Penguins are
moved elsewhere before
next season, but they
should know they were
never meant to be in
the NHL in the first
place.

They became part of the
league in the original expan-
sion of 1967 because
Vancouver screwed up. In
other words, they came in by
default. The wrong
Vancouver people had
turned up at the New York
expansion mecting a vear
earlier and were quickly
rejected.

So, pull up a chair for
today’s short history lesson,
plus a suggestion that if the
Penguins move anywhere, it
should be 300 miles south of
here to Portland, if only for
the sake of nostalgia. You
see, there was a time, a half
century ago — and for rea-
sons never revealed — that
the Portland team in the old
Pacific Coast League also
carried the unlikely name,
Penguins. Can any other city
make such a claim?

At the time the NHL first
expanded from six to 12
teams, you faust remember it
was an old cronies’ organiza-
tion. And the most powerful

- of the cronics was Chicago
“Black Hawks’ owner Jim
Norris. As head of the Norris
clan, he also owned, through
his half-brother Bruce, the

. Detroit Red Wings and
pieces of the Boston Garden
and the old Madison Square

-. Garden.

Not for nothing was the

. NHL known as the Norris
House League; or was Norris
routinely referred to by dis-
tinguished New York sports
columnist Red Smith as
Octopus Inc.

At a time when pro foot-
ball and basketball were
expanding, the NHL had
been getting hints from the
U.S. government’s anti-trust
branch it should do the
same. And more pointediy,

* Norris had been ordered to
divest himself of the St.

Louis Arena, As the home of

the minor league St. Louis

Braves, it wasn's worth
much, As the home of a new
NHL franchise, the value
would go up dramatically.

There, then, was the gen-
esis of expansion. To cover
future TV possibilities, two
teams would go to the West
Coast in California, two to
the Midwest, in Minnesosa
and St. Louis, one to
Philadelphia in.the already
well-covered East and, to
keep Canada happy, the last
one to Vancouver.

The problem, as men-
tioned earlier, was Vancouver
screwed up. Vancouver
industrialist Frank McMahon
was the guy the NHL, and
especially Norris, wanted.
They were wintertime neigh-
bours and drinking buddies
at West Palm Beach, Fla.
Only one stipulation: Frank
had to buy the then minor
league Canucks as a prelimi-
nary step.

He and the team’s owner,
former Vancouver mayor
Fred Hume, shook hands on
a deal and agreed that Hume
would make the announce-
ment. It was not to be.
Vancouver Sen publisher Stu
Keate, who was privy to the
negotiations and knew a
good exclusive when he saw
one, talked McMahon into
letting him break the story.

He broke it all over Page
One. Hume felt McMahon
had betrayed him and sold
the team, instead, to a group
of 10-percenters headed by
ex-BC Tel president Cy
McLean and Toronto broad-
caster Foster Hewirt. When
these two walked into the
New York meeting room to
make their pitch, Norris
looked up trom the table and
growled: “Where’s my old
friend Frank McMahon?”
The Vancouver bid died
right there.

While Buffalo had the
best credentials to fiil the

north shore news

@ SPORTS

hole, it was given short shrift
because Toronto's Harold
Ballard considered up-state
New York and the Niagara
peninsula to be the Leats’
TV territory. So there was
longshot Pittsburgh, siting
in the wings. It won by
default and thus the
Penguins were Jaunched
onto the rocky financial road
they've ridden the last three
decades.

When the end-ofthe-cen-
tury expansion program was
being put together,
Commissioner Gary Becuman
went after Paul Allen to join
the hunt. Allen laughed at
him; said che NHI was ask-
ing too much and giving too
little. He should know. He
already owns the NBA
Portland Trail Blazers and
the NFL Seattle Seahawks.
He told Bettman to come
back when he had something
reasonable to offer.

Allen is, you might sus-
pect, loaded. He should be.
He and Bill Gates founded
Microsoft. He sold his half
of the action to Gates some
years ago for more money
than he can ever spend.
Maybe Bettman will come
back and maybe Allen will
pay substantially more for a
very good team-in-being,
instead of a collection of
expunsion draft castofts.

Tt could fill another 40 to
50 nights a year for him in
the 26,000-seart structure he
built awhile back for the
Blazers and named the Rose
Garden. Penguins in a rose
garden? A tritle incongruous,
bur Portland has history on
its side.

When hockey came back
to the coast following World
War IE, the Portland team
was initially named the
Eagles. But 50 years ago this

scason, the team owners
(Shipstad and Johnson,
founders of the [ce Follies)
for reasons unknown dis-
carded the lordly cagle and
renamed the team the
Penguins.

They even bad a real live
penguin mascot, which gen-
eral manager and coach
Jimmy Ward, an oidtime
NH Ler of note, was required
to take on the ogcasional
road wip. When in
Vancouver, they stayed at
Coley Hall's York Hotel.
Jimmy got the bed, the pen-

Summer Camps
Ages 5-12

Wednesday, May 26, 1999 — North Shore News - 39

guin the bathtub. The bird
would parade around the ice
before the game started.

The team stayed the
Penguins for two seasons,
reverted to Eagles for one
and then folded, mostly
because of a terrible rink, 3
building that dated from
early in the century when
Lester and Frank Patrick first
brought major league hockey
to the coast.

When Portland joined the
league in 1914-15, it became
the first ever American city
to quality as a challenger tor

d have been Penguins

the Stanley Cup. Indeed,
Portland played Montreal in
the Cup final of 1916. It was
the first of the Canadiens’ 23
Cup championships and che
tirst Cup appearance by a
U:S.-based team.

By the bye, the Portland
team name back then cer-
tainly wasn’t the Penguins,
but a name of quite another
fragrance. It would fit per-
feedly into Allen’s Rose
Garden, if it’s goodbye
Pittsburgh, hello Portland. {c
was, IT kid you not, the
Rosebuds.

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