The WEIRDEST NHL Expansion of All Time
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Published 2024-04-25
1991 NHL Expansion Draft Exposed Player List: historicalhockey.blogspot.com/2013/11/1991-nhl-exp…
Not Mike Craig Trade Tree: www.sportscardforum.com/threads/2521599-Trade-Tree…
NHL expansion has always been imperfect. In some cases, it has been rushed or poorly thought out. Other times, no one bothered thinking about the unintended consequences. However, to the league’s credit, it has at least tried assist teams so they wouldn’t be abject.
The six-team NHL expansion in 1967 saw all six new teams placed in their own conference and kind of allowed to do their own thing. It wasn’t pretty, but it was fun and fair, considering the riff-raff made available to them in that year’s expansion draft.
In the various 1970s NHL expansion drafts, the new franchises received the top selections in that year’s entry draft in addition to picking various castoffs. And there is 1979 and the WHA teams coming into the NHL which is sort of its own thing altogether.
Then 1991 came along and it was finally time for the NHL to have an even number of teams after more than a decade of playing with 21 franchises. Doing that, however, involved the single weirdest NHL expansion of all time.
The story of the San Jose Sharks and the worst NHL expansion of all time begins in 1975, when California Golden Seals minority owners George and Gordon Gund convinced then-majority owner Melvin Swig to move the franchise to Cleveland. The move was disastrous, mostly because it was last-minute.
The NHL wasn’t all that keen on removing a hockey team from the state of hockey while owners hated the idea of losing a potential expansion market and the fees which came with it. After behind closed doors haggling, it was announced the Gunds would sell the North Stars to an ownership group keeping the franchise in Minnesota (LOL) for $31.5 million.
They, in turn, handed the NHL $50 million for an expansion franchise that would play in San Jose. However, George and Gordon Gund had to make a huge concession to the other NHL owners in order to get them to sign off on the entire deal.
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All Comments (21)
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How bad one must be to lose money with a pro hockey team in Minnesota!?
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The strangest part of the story is that the NHL robbed the Sharks of the #1 overall pick two years in a row. For the 1st time in history, they didn't award the #1 pick to an expansion team and instead gave it to the previous season's worst team. The next season, they defaulted to awarding the top 2 picks to the incoming Lighting and Senators. The team with the worst record that season? The Sharks, of course who got to pick 3rd.
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The old sharks logo is gorgeous
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So basically the NHL was run like a fantasy football league with your buddies
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The games in Sacramento were in both 92-93 and 93-94 as part of all NHL teams playing two neutral site games in the 84 game season. The league was testing the waters for games in other markets. There were neutral site games scheduled for 94-95 but the lock out scrapped that as only a 48 game season was played. The NHL schedule starting in 95-96 was shortened to 82 and the neutral site schedule was eliminated.
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I'd like to add that the Sharks could've drafted Scott Niedermayer in 1991 (picked Pat Faloon instead) and Chris Pronger in 1993 (traded pick) long before they teamed up in Anaheim to win the Cup in 2007
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Arturs Irbe lead the Carolina Hurricanes to the 2002 Stanley Cup finals where they lost 1-4 to the Detroit All Stars.
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The fact an original 6 team like Montreal came to Sacramento blows my mind. Terry Harper who won 5 Stanley Cups with the Canadiens lives in Folsom and plays pick up games at skatetown.
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Arturs Irbe!!!! I remember this season well. Everyone in Boston had Sharks and Lightning gear in lieu of Bruins gear for a moment before either team played a game. Those Sharks jerseys are still the coolest.
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Get most of what you say, except that the Gunds basically learned from their Seals and Barons experience, and built the Sharks franchise on Merchandising. Look at how jersey sales, for instance, propelled them early on. This is something that has kept the San Jose Sharks out of trouble, no matter the bad trades or on-ice product.
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Not even San Francisco. The Cow Palace is in Daly City. In San Mateo County. San Francisco is contiguous with San Francisco county. Daly City is closer to SF than Sanjo though. You’re correct. But it’s not in SF. People liked the Cow Palace because it has a low ceiling. It made the atmosphere loud and makes for an intimate feeling. :-)
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I've been a Sharks fan going back to when I was in grade school in 1993 and remember that playoff run. I was too young to understand the shenanigans that went on for our entry draft and the dispersal draft. I've watched and heard a lot of backgrounds on what that process was like, and a lot of the details you had here were new information to me. Exceptional video you have here. And thank you for the background on a team I've loved & followed for over 30 years.
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One thing you left out is the price tag of the expansion fee. The NHL previously announced the fee would be $50M but gave the Gunds a discounted rate due to their owning the North Stars. The Sharks only had to pay $35M and that and the dispersal/expansion draft fiasco are the sole reasons that Lloyd Pettit pulled his bid for Milwaukee a few years later. Before Pettit pulled his bid it was widely considered that Milwaukee would have been awarded the spot that Ottawa now has.
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I went to games at the Cow Palace. It was a terrible place to watch a hockey, but we were excited to have an NHL team. It didn’t even have a video jumbotron to watch replays 😂
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If you do a video about the NHL moving back to Minnesota, let me know. The Mayor who brought it back, Norm Coleman, was an alumni at my university for undergrad. Hes got stories about how he tried to get the Jets and Whalers to come and how the NHL wanted Houston, but the negotiations for a new Arena stalled and St. Paul became the benefactor.
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Not a NHL fan but I still enjoyed this a lot. If you’re ever struggling for an idea for a story imagine if a MLB team left spring training with one name headed to one city and roughly 4 days later on opening day of that same year that team had a different name playing for a different home city, that’s exactly how the Seattle Pilots became the Milwaukee Brewers.
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Great breakdown! Thank you for your hard work 🍻
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My mom said this about the cow palace sharks. “Went on a date there with your father. Sharks got crushed but it was so much fun. Great atmosphere, got a nice dinner before the game, only bad part was your father. Wish I never met him” She divorced my dad because he was abusive. Thank god he isn’t alive anymore
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North stars went 6 games in the SCF in 1991
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Great Video. Thanks for doing all of this. While I knew, since I am 62, the majority of it, there were things that I didn't know, such as Long Retired players nearly being San Jose Sharks & thanks for the history. You did it quite well.
