When the Seattle Kraken got their franchisemorandum in 2019, it felt as if the NHL finally reached a city that had a long history of hockey without the involvement of the NHL. Of course the Metropolitans of Seattle De Stanley Cup won in 1917, but that was still a time when each team could challenge the holder of a trophy of a competition. Instead, the city had long been a junior and small hockey outside post to De Kraken in 2020, but that was perhaps not the case that Vincent Abbey, president of the CHL’s Seattle Totems, had his business in 1975.
According to a report in the Winnipeg free press On Thursday, February 27, 1975, the Seattle Hockey Group, under the leadership of Abbey, officially bowed the running for an NHL expansion team in the city that is expected to play in the NHL season 1975-76. Here is that report.
It seems that Seattle Oh came so close to get a team as the chairman of the NHL of the expansion committee, William Jennings, sounded as if he had given the green light to Seattle as long as the property group could meet the required criteria for expansion. They had received a conditional franchise in 1974, whereby they would have to meet the criteria set out by the NHL. All these potential owners of an NHL franchise in Seattle had to meet those conditions.
According to Jennings, the Totems group “would not be prepared in the near future to carry out its earlier offer to acquire an NHL team for the 1975-76 season.” Unable to think of the $ 1 million that is needed for the franchise, the NHL dream of Seattle officially died in the NHL directory room at the end of February in 1975 and we would wait almost fifty years before the NHL in Seattle landed as the Kraken officially.
However, where this story takes a turn, that of Victoria Daily colonist offered a completely contradictory report a day later.
If you keep track of the score, the NHL said that the Seattle offer was dead on Thursday, but on Friday the group of ownership in Seattle was preparing for “a clear obligation” within a few weeks. Both accounts cannot be true on the basis of the statements given, so was the Seattle offer on a team from 1975 on or off? And who should we believe?
Eleven days later the waters was still muddy when NHL-President Clarence Campbell stated that the then Pittsburgh Penguins can move to Seattle for the 1975-76 season after handling the financial situations of both the Penguins and the Golden Seals on 11 March 1975. The report in the report in the report in the report in the report in the report. Medicine Hoednieuws is below.
If you spend all the chatter about the penguins and seals, the Canadian press noted that the NHL expansion committee had weighed options for the wrestling franchises that were already part of the NHL. As we know from the article of 27 February in the Winnipeg free pressThe Denver group already insisted on the seals to move there, and that left Seattle, who had received a conditional franchise, as an option like the penguins.
However, that still does not answer the question about Vincent Abbey or his ownership group that had received a conditional franchise. It was clear that the NHL had to give a kind of answer about what happened to the expansion box in Seattle before it could move the penguins if that was the solution for the Pittsburgh insolvency.
We would finally get that answer from the NHL on March 12, 1975.
According to Al Colletti’s report in the Winnipeg free press That day, Denver won the right to start an expansion franchise for the 1975-76 season, where they were placed next to Boston, Toronto, Buffalo and California in the Adams Division. However, they were given the option to buy the Golden Seals, and instead were given an extension of franchise option for the sum of $ 6 million.
Unfortunately for Seattle, expansion would not happen with Campbell, so the supply of the expansion for 1975-76 was dead, but the conditional franchise offer for 1976-77 was still in the game. NHL-Vice president Don Ruck, however, told reporters that the option of Seattle 1975 was dead from ten days earlier, confirming Campbell that Abbey had never posted the required credit letter. When asked whether Abbey would assume the fault of the Pittsburgh Penguins in a move, Campbell said: “That is dead, absolutely dead. Unless Seattle thinks a brand new offer that is acceptable for the Pittsburgh parties, is that so -called ‘well’ agreement is dead.”
It was also revealed that the Pittsburgh penguins had applied for a loan via the NHL and its governors, and that enabled them to stay in Pittsburgh at that time. By moving the team to Seattle that was off the table, the Penguins remained in Pittsburgh while the NHL decided what to do with their financial mess.
The seals, with their own financial chaos, received a deadline of 1 May 1975 by Campbell when it came to the future of the team in Oakland, because he made it clear that the competition would not run the franchise for another year and lose millions of dollars. If you think they could just move to the north of the coast to Seattle, NHL made it clear that there was no property group, because Abbey could not produce the credit letter and had no other groups out.
If you thought this story ended in 1975, we are not completely ready.
Abbey sued the NHL in 1983 in one $ 9.8 million antitrust lawsuit That claimed that the NHL causes the downfall of the Seattle Totems franchise because of an inability to attract top talent with the WHA and NHL that monopolize that talent. He also claimed that the NHL franchise from Seattle never granted by “a complex series of deceptions or inactivity by the NHL”. Because I am not a lawyer, nor a playing on TV, some accusations seem very unacceptable by Abbey, but the American court in Seattle was in session on November 9.
24 days later, judge of the American court Donald Vorhees the case rejected After the conclusion of the claimants’ matter, the government’s governors could not have prove their case. This would be one of one of one Number of lawsuits That Abbey had submitted against the NHL since its failed expansion of expansion, and it seems that the legal fights above Seattle would come to a conclusion somewhere near the beginning of 1986.
What should not be lost in all this legal maneuver from 1981 is that in 1975 the city for two weeks the city of Seattle, Washington, was a million dollar from an NHL city that may have prevented the Kraken ever. Make all the jokes you want about getting up the depth, but the cracking would probably remain as mythical creatures in the stories of sailors, a lawyer named Vincent Abbey produced that credit letter at the end of February in 1975.
Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!
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