NHL's Expansion Follies Started in '66, Writer Says

When people criticize the NHL's move to southern markets, usually the new locales of the 1990s and 2000s are targeted. The expansion to Tampa Bay, Miami, Nashville, Atlanta and the Whalers' relocation to Carolina tend to come to mind. Each has their supporters and detractors and now that the Phoenix Coyotes, who moved to the desert in 1996, are in trouble, the topic comes up for debate more often.

Given this much ammunition, detractors usually keep busy trashing on the likes of Phoenix, Nashville and their southern brethren. But not Frank Deford of NPR. When it comes to trashing the NHL's expansion, he takes it old school. And by 'old school' I mean 'back to the first time the NHL expanded in 1966.'

Mr. Deford -- 43 years after the fact, mind you -- thinks the NHL was better off with only six teams.

Long ago, one evening in 1966, I was in a suite at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto with some folks from the National Hockey League. They were all feeling pretty heady. The league was about to double in size, an incursion into the United States that would take Canada's game as far south as Los Angeles.

Since the NHL was a huge success in all its six franchise cities in Canada and the northern U.S., everybody was certain that great times must lie ahead in the expansion outpost.

Of course, it didn't work out quite that way.

Yeah, those six franchises they added in 1966 were a mistake. The Philadelphia and Pittsburgh franchises never really were able to establish fanbases before folding in 1972 and '76. The two California franchises were swept out to sea during a 1984 earthquake and the Minnesota expansion got lost in a blizzard back in '87. The other franchise in St. Louis, well, they did alright for themselves.

Err... wait. Am I remembering that right? Help me out, Frank.

But the league has pressed on, forever sprinkling franchises into places like Miami and Nashville and Raleigh in a vain effort to be a fully national American television sport. It doesn't seem to do any good. NHL ratings are traditionally woeful, especially down South.

I'll give you Miami, but the teams in Nashville and Raleigh are attracting fans, no? And let's ignore the success stories in places such as Columbus and Dallas while we're doing this. But I digress.

This isn't about the recent expansions and relocations. It's about that pesky bunch that took the NHL from a niche sport in 1966 to slightly less of a niche sport in 1967. That's where all of the league's problems stem from! Forget that the NHL has since turned into a nationally recognized sport in America, albeit not nationally followed, and earned itself enough attention to be nationally televised. Bah! In 1966, they didn't have TVs! Right, Frank? So let's all go back to wood-burning stoves, eight tracks and coal power too!