On Wednesday I wrote about a potential expansion franchise in Seattle that the NHL almost admitted in his membership in 1975. Things clearly did not go well for that expansion plan in Seattle, because we did not see NHL team in that city until the Kraken were received in 2021 in 2021 in 2021, the colored rock teams in 1975. started to play in 1976, but this expansion story was not completed in my writing. And to be honest, it will not end with the Rockies, because the Denver Spurs never reached the NHL as ever planned.
I will post the March 12, 1975 Winnipeg free press Artier article.
In the article by Al Colletti, Denver Spurs President Ivan Mullenix received a NHL extension franchise for the 1975-76 season despite his efforts to buy the gold seals in California and move them to Denver. The NHL ruled that Mullenix could have the conditional franchise as an expansion team that would play in the Adams division against Boston, Toronto, Buffalo and California when they came to the competition as the 19th franchise. That is where I had left the story of the Spurs on Wednesday, so let’s finish this saga today.
By one Jamie Bradburn 2020 -articleMullenix started watching the NHL with cynicism based on “the poor first seasonal performances of expansion teams in Kansas City and Washington, the registration fee of $ 6 million and other things that led to an anti-trust lawsuit” by the potential owner Vince Abbey in Seattle. While Mullenix’s vision of NHL’s expansion process was soured, the idea that he brought the former CHL Denver Spurs to the NHL was less and less likely.
By 19 May 1975 it seemed that both parties had changed their tunes.
Victoria’s Daily colonist Reported that Ivan Mullenix had decided to bring his company to the WA instead of becoming a member of the NHL, and it seems that the NHL was not too satisfied with this turn of developments. NHL -President Clarence Campbell said that Mullenix had not paid any money to the NHL, nor binding documents during the expansion process, and he almost hit the door close to Mullenix’s involvement at the NHL by saying: “If he is not willing to support his interests with his money and we are too respectful, we are
No offense on Clarence Campbell, but someone sounds a bit about Mullenix to choose the WHA above the NHL. Just like a minorer, Campbell’s comments are more personal than rooted in business.
Making things on all fronts was the fact that the NHL Board of Governors meeting of 14 June entirely over the wrestling franchises of the Pittsburgh Penguins and the California Golden Seals rather than the general competition activities. Campbell was again asked for expansion on which he immediately threw cold water, and all McNeil of the Brandon Sun Noted at the end of the article that Mullenix was now destroying the NHL for $ 1.3 million about antitrust fuels. To be honest, this entire expansion of 1975 was blown up in the face of the NHL.
What the NHL did not know is that it may have been avoided another financial crisis, because the WHAs did not even complete Denver Spurs for one season. Despite adding a number of former Chicago Cougars players after that team had folded in 1975, the Spurs were just a bad team. While they had former Nhlers Ralph Backstrom and Darryl Maggs on their selection, the Spurs placed a 14-26-1 record through 41 games while playing for meager crowds on most nights.
Mullenix saw his bank account are removed because the costs were considerably higher than income, and he made the decision to leave Denver while the team was on a road trip, because it was reported that the Spurs would go to Ottawa for their Wednesday, January 7, 1976 match against the New England Whalers. The team would play Ottawa Civic Arena from the 8000 seats as an old drummer, music producer and manager Ron Sparling And Henry Feller, an owner of a women’s dress on Elgin Street, convinced Mullenix to bring the Spurs to Ottawa on a test run to prove that Ottawa could support professional hockey with the hope of buying the traces in the future.
Reports emerged after the move that star player Ralph Backstrom wanted from his contract, but both the Spurs and the WHA made it clear that he had a legal and binding contract for which he had to be in Ottawa. Moreover, on January 6, 1976, Mullenix announced that the team “certainly will play the rest of the World Hockey Association schedule in Ottawa”. Were these true?
Backstrom was in the Spurs-Civics-Line-up against the New England Whalers on January 7, so he honored the contract he signed when he told reporters that he was just looking for stability for his family after he had moved for the third time within a year. Backstrom’s agent claimed that the contract that his client signed was “non-transferable” and that the traces that moved to Ottawa counted as a transfer. Nevertheless, Backstrom played for Ottawa.
During the WHA All-Star competition in Cleveland on Tuesday, January 13, the WHA announced that the Ottawa Civics would move to the Canadian division for the rest of the season, creating a scenario in which the WHA final would contain a series between a Canadian team and an American team. She still saw the move from Ottawa to the Canadian division in last place in the division, but the WHA would now have a cross-border battle for the AVCO Cup with their revised Playoff layout.
There was only one problem: the Civics were no longer something.
Mullenix officially concluded the entire operation of the Spurs-Civics franchise on January 17, 1976 after he had not received an agreement to visit the franchise on the Ottawa Founders Club. That came less than two weeks after he told everyone that the team would play the schedule in Ottawa, so that was also false. The franchise of Spurs-Civics was officially dead and all players became free agents.
Because there are not many records for this 17-day existence of the Civics, I will show you Jamie Bradburn’s excellent summary From the stay of two and a half weeks of the Civic in Ottawa. It is filled with all kinds of information that many of the newspaper archives to which I have access have not treated. Bradburn has done a really good job here, so he deserves a lot of credit for digging through history and merging what has one of the shortest existence in hockey.
Regarding the antitrust lawsuit of Mullenix against the NHL, there seems to be no history about what has become. My gamble is that it was brought down as the court case of Vince Abbey was because there was no evidence.
Where people have to worry, however, is what Mullenix has become. According to news items, Ivan Mullenix was stabbed to death On July 17, 2013 by his wife, Mary, at the age of 76. Additional reports shows that The police had been to the Mullenix’s Home sixteen times Between 2009 and 2013 for various reasons, including an incident with domestic violence in 2012 where Mary was suffocated.
In the resulting test, Mary Mullenix was sentenced to reduced charges to what 90 days in prison seemed to be and five years in the probationary period, assuming that they “completed a 90-day alcohol handling program in prison, fur consumption and no alcohol consumption.
It is pretty strange to think that the man who perhaps brought the NHL to Denver in 1975 failed with the WHA in both Denver and Ottawa before his life was tragically demolished in what sounded like an unhappy marriage. I am not here to make a judgment about how Mullenix led his life, but this story feels like something you would see Dateline Or a similar TV program. In any case, that is the story of the “other team” during the failed attempt by the NHL to expand in 1975.
Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!
#Denver #Ottawa #Murder