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Sixty Moments That Changed The Game
The Hockey News has been providing the most comprehensive coverage of the world of hockey since 1947. In each issue, you'll find news, features and opinions about the NHL and leagues across North America and the world.
Florida Panthers
BEST PLAYER EVER Mellanby’s hard work gave the expansion franchise an identity. He led the club in scoring its first year and again in 1995-96, helping a team of oddities reach the Stanley Cup final. FRANCHISE FORMATION H. Wayne Huizenga was awarded an NHL franchise on Dec. 10, 1992 and announced South Florida as its location. Through the expansion draft, they built the most successful first-year team in NHL history. TOP BUILDER While Bryan Murray was GM, Florida made the playoffs three of the six years, including the 1996 Cup final. Since Murray was fired in late 2000, the team has failed to make the playoffs. BEST DRAFTED PLAYER ED JOVANOVSKI (1st overall, 1994) Jovanovski played in his first (and only) Cup final at age 19. He has size, strength and can put up points, but has…
TWO LEAGUES BECOME ONE
IT’S IRONIC THE WHA WENT AS QUIETLY as it did in the summer of 1979. After seven tumultuous seasons in which it turned the hockey establishment on its ear, the rebel league’s merger with the NHL was an unconditional surrender. Nearly 30 years after the fact, the terms of the agreement – which was euphemistically termed an “expansion” by the NHL – remain incomprehensibly punitive. The four WHA teams absorbed by the senior circuit – Winnipeg, Edmonton, Quebec City and Hartford – paid $6 million apiece in franchise fees. For that price, they were allowed to protect two goalies and two forwards. The Winnipeg Jets won the last Avco Cup in the spring of 1979, then lost Kent Nilsson, Terry Ruskowski, Rich Preston and Barry Long in the farcical draft as…
SIXTY YEARS OF CHANGE
“Your reach should exceed your grasp – or what’s a Heaven for?”– Robert Browning The NHL never had the poet Robert Browning in mind when it came to rule changes, but I have to give it credit – the NHL never has stopped trying to improve itself. Nor have players, coaches and managers. From Day 1 in 1917 to the present under Gary Bettman, change has been inevitable and incessant. I saw my first hockey game at Madison Square Garden in 1939 before the Zamboni was born and the ice was brown because artificial whitener had not yet been discovered. The difference between the spectacle then and today’s entertainment is roughly equivalent to the distinction between the Model T Ford and a rocket ship. And speaking of rockets, I bet you didn’t know there once…
PHILADELPHIA FISTICUFFS
BORN MEEK AND GENERIC IN THE 1967 expansion, the Flyers were humiliated in four straight games by the belligerent St. Louis Blues in the first round of the 1969 playoffs. “I made up my mind we had to get bigger, tougher players,” said owner Ed Snider. In an NHL where only 55 per cent of the players were 6-feet or taller and only 18 per cent weighed over 200 pounds, the Flyers used the 1969 draft to select not only Bobby Clarke in the second round, but only one player under 6-feet tall, including Dave Schultz in the fourth round and Don Saleski in the fifth. By 1972-73, Clarke had become a full-fledged superstar and Schultz, who had just upped his own American League penalty minute record of 259 with 348, was…
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