By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Seattle has served as home base for professional hockey franchises largely without interruption since 1914-15 when the Patrick brothers, Lester and Frank, made the city part of the newly formed Pacific Coast Hockey Association with their creation of the famed Metropolitans.
The PCHA, which also included franchises in Vancouver, Victoria and Portland, rapidly developed into such a serious rival to the established National Hockey Association, forerunner of the National Hockey League, that the regular-season champions of each circuit agreed to square off in the postseason, Lord Stanley’s Cup going to the winner.
Seattle took the Cup in 1917 in a rousing series at the downtown Ice Arena (capacity 2,500) and played for it three times in a four-year span. That’s as close as Seattle made it to top-tier hockey until the late 1970s when lawyer Vince Abbey, co-owner of the Totems, nearly landed an NHL franchise.
It took another 20 years after Abbey’s failure to procure one for Seattle to receive another shot.
But billboard baron Barry Ackerley, owner of the NBA’s SuperSonics, torpedoed that chance with his bizarre actions at a 1990 meeting with the NHL’s Board of Governors and his remodel of KeyArena five years later that ensured the NHL would stay out of town for a good while longer.
No NHL ownership group seriously considered the Seattle market again until prospective purchasers of the Phoenix Coyotes were threatened with a loss of their lease. A couple of New York financiers indicated interest buying the team and relocating the franchise to Seattle if the Glendale, AZ., City Council failed to approve a lease heavily weighted in favor of the club.
But it did by a 4-3 vote a week ago, ensuring the Coyotes will stay put and that Seattle will have to wait for another chance to return to the top tier of professional hockey.
By our count, the Coyotes represent the fifth missed opportunity to do so.
As Jeff Obermeyer, author of Emerald Ice, writes in his excellent local history of the sport at seattlehockey.net, more than 1,000 men have suited up for various Seattle teams over the years, from Cup champion Metropolitans to the Western Hockey League’s Thunderbirds. More than 250 played one or more games in the NHL, eight earning induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
The Metropolitans employed four of the eight – Frank Foyston, Harry “Hap” Holmes, Lester Patrick and Jack Walker, who also had a stint with the short-lived Seattle Eskimos. But the Metropolitans lasted only until 1924, when they folded due to post-championship apathy (a year after they folded, the Ice Arena was coverted into a parking garage).
The Mets’ former coach, Pete Muldoon, helped revive the sport professionally in Seattle in 1928 with the introduction of the Seattle Eskimos of the new Pacific Coast Hockey League, but the PCHL struggled until 1931 and went out of business.
The Northwest Hockey League (NWHL) took the PCHL’s place in 1933-34, the Sea Hawks representing Seattle. By 1940-41, the Sea Hawks had morphed into the Olympics, sent off financially largely by World War II.
Immediately after the war, Seattle placed two entries in the new Pacific Hockey League, the Isaacson Ironmen and Sick’s Stars, the latter sponsored by Rainiers owner Emil Sick. The Stars ultimately disbanded, the Ironmen, for whom Fred Shero, future Hall of Famer and coach of Philadelphia’s “Broad Street Bullies” played, became the Bombers (1952-54), who begat the Americans (1955-58), who begat the Totems (1958-75), the latter club giving Seattle its second great era of hockey and first since Muldoon’s Mets.
During their era, the Totems played in five Western Hockey League finals, winning three championships, and five times featured the league’s MVP (Guyle Fielder four times, Bill MacFarland once). The Totems’ attendance figures typically rose and fell in direct proportion to the club’s performance on the ice (see Wayback Machines Guyle Fielder & The Seattle Totems and Bill MacFarland & The Totems).
For a good part of their run, the Totems flourished financially. But by the end of the 1971-72 season, the glory years gone, owners Abbey and Eldred Barnes found themselves upside down financially and had little recourse but to sell a majority interest to Northwest Sports, owners of the Vancouver Canucks, in order to keep the doors open.
As part of their agreement, Abbey and Barnes received the right to re-purchase the Totems from the Canucks should Seattle ever be offered an NHL franchise.
Up to that point, Seattle had never been offered one. The NHL did not want to place a franchise – existing or expansion – in a minor league market, which Seattle remained until 1966-67 when the NBA expanded to Seattle.
But the NHL became extremely interested in Seattle after the SuperSonics and Pilots (1969) arrived, and especially after, in 1972, the World Hockey Association squalled into existence, suddenly making Seattle a coveted site for both leagues. The question: Which league would win the race to Seattle?
As the Totems struggled through 26-32-14 and 32-42-4 seasons in 1972-73 and 1973-74, Abbey assembled a new ownership group and launched efforts to acquire an NHL franchise. He finally rang the bell June 12, 1974.
On that date, the NHL announced that Abbey’s group had been awarded an expansion team to begin play in the 1976-77 season. As a condition, a reasonable one, the NHL mandated that Abbey (and his partners) make a $180,000 deposit on the franchise by the end of 1975.
The total franchise fee would amount to approximately $6 million.
In addition, the NHL declared that Abbey had to repurchase the shares in the Totems held by the Canucks, who were using the Totems as a farm club, and had lent the Totems money to be used as operating capital, about $400,000.
The NHL’s expansion announcement also included a franchise for Denver. With the loss of two of its major markets, the Western Hockey League announced that it would fold, forcing the Totems to join the Central Hockey League for 1974-75 before formally entering the NHL.
Elated Seattle hockey fans had no idea of the underlying snafu: Abbey did not have sufficient funds to repurchase the shares he had sold to the Canucks, or make the $180,000 expansion deposit to the NHL.
Abbey missed several NHL-imposed deadlines while scrambling to secure financing, and with each miss the NHL threatened to pull the franchise, claiming that it had any number of other suitors in the wings.
During this time, Abbey passed on an opportunity to purchase a WHA team for $2 million, and also missed a chance to acquire an existing franchise when the Pittsburgh Penguins were sold in a bankruptcy proceeding for $4.4 million in June 1975.
Abbey finally had to fold the Totems, at which point the NHL pulled the expansion franchise from Seattle, leaving the city without hockey for the first time in two decades (Denver also lost its franchise after one year of operation). Although Abbey failed to come with the money, he filed suit against the NHL and the Canucks for anti-trust violations that he alleged prevented him from acquiring a team.
Abbey’s lawsuits clogged the courts until 1986 when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out his claims.
That seemed to squash Seattle’s chances of ever receiving another franchise — until the NHL announced a new round of expansion for the 1992-93 season. Two groups in Seattle surfaced as potential owners, one headed by Bill Ackerley, son of SuperSonics owner Barry Ackerley, the other by Microsoft executive Chris Larson. Ultimately, the camps joined forces.
In the fall of 1990, Larson and former Totems star and coach Bill MacFarland met with the NHL’s Board of Directors, and the hockey suits became enthralled at the prospect of welcoming a Microsoft millionaire into the flock.
Then, on Dec. 5 that year, MacFarland, Larson, Barry Ackerley and Bill Lear, an Ackerley financial advisor, traveled to West Palm Beach, FL., to meet the NHL’s Board of Governors at the Breakers Hotel.
Considered a lock to land a franchise, the Seattle contingent did not even receive a full hearing because Barry Ackerley mysteriously pulled Seattle’s application without acknowledging Larson or McFarland, or even giving any reason.
“He (Ackerley) double-crossed us,” MacFarland told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “He admitted it.”
Bill Ackerley also admitted – and denied – a lot of things in the aftermath of one of the major mixups/mishaps in Seattle’s pro sports history.
Although the NHL had set a $50 million minimum price tag for an expansion franchise, Larson figured that a $35 million offer would get him in the door and provide him a chance to negotiate.
What neither Larson nor MacFarland knew was that while they had gone to Florida to file a formal application for a team, Acklerley had gone there to withdraw it. Incredibly, none of this came up when the Seattle group convened in strategy sessions prior to meeting with the NHL.
MacFarland, Ackerley and Lear had dinner the night before the meeting and the subject of the application did not arise. Joined by Larson, they all had breakfast on the morning of the meeting. Ackerley never said a word about pulling the application.
“I mean, we were there thinking we were going to be working with these people to bring the NHL to Seattle,” MacFarland told the Post-Intelligencer.
MacFarland later told The News Tribune (Tacoma) that the four of them were sitting in a room waiting to speak to NHL executives when then-NHL president John Ziegler stuck his head in and informed them they were next on the docket.
At that point, according to MacFarland, Ackerley asked his “allies” if he could address NHL officials by himself before the group as a whole met league officials.
“It seemed a little weird,” said MacFarland, “but what the heck. We said, ‘No problem.’”
When Ackerley confronted NHL owners, he formally withdrew the franchise application while MacFarland and Larson waited in the other room, oblivious to what Ackerley had done.
Ackerley never did – at least adequately – explain his odd action. He simply departed the hotel via a side door and flew back to Seattle without a word to MacFarland or Larson.
A few minutes after Ackerley vamoosed, NHL official Gil Stein informed MacFarland and Larson that the expansion application had been pulled and that Ackerley had left the building.
“We were floored; we couldn’t believe it,” MacFarland told the P-I.
“Why were we here? How could they sit with us and not tell us what they were going to do?”
No one ever received a satisfactory answer. Bill Ackerley later told The News Tribune that, “We felt the money wasn’t there,” and “we didn’t want to damage our name and reputation with the NHL by offering up something that would be unacceptable to them. We went to Florida with the intent of pulling the application. We just felt it wasn’t going to happen financially.”
If so, why didn’t Ackerley inform Larson and MacFarland of his intention to pull the franchise at dinner or breakfast?
Said Ackerley: “It just never came up.”
And why were Larson and MacFarland in Florida at all if Ackerley didn’t think Larson had enough money to acquire a franchise? Less than two years later, Larson would become a 27 percent owner of the Mariners, the largest U.S. owner behind the 55 percent of Hiroshi Yamauchi of Japan, who helped purchase the MLB team from Jeff Smulyan for $125 million.
Ackerley never offered a plausible explanation. He claimed he had been unaware that Larson was prepared to spend at least $35 million, and $50 million if necessary. He said he was under the impression Larson only had $10 million to invest. He never explained where he came by that notion, and only said he was surprised Larson and MacFarland traveled to Florida in the first place.
Ackerley “sort of” took responsibility, saying, “It was my fault,” and “I’m sorry for the way it happened,” and “there was no intent to embarrass Chris Larson or anybody,” and “there’s a lot I wish I would have done differently.”
In the end, Ackerley blamed the loss of an NHL franchise on a “miscommunication” (“For want of a nail the shoe was lost . . .”).
MacFarland always believed Barry Ackerley never wanted an NHL franchise that would have competed for favorable arena dates and advertising dollars with the Sonics team he owned in the same building (Coliseum, later KeyArena), and that hewanted only to control the application process to ensure that.
Half a decade later, in 1995, MacFarland’s opinion became reality when a $100 million transformation of the Seattle Coliseum into the 17,000-seat KeyArena provided no adequate configuration – just 11,000 unrestricted view seats — for NHL hockey.
KeyArena is still inadequate for the NHL’s long-term purposes. But Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and arena investor Chris Hansen claimed in June that the building could serve as an interim home for two or three years until Hansen’s plans for an arena in SoDo were completed, returning the city to the sport’s top tier for the first time since the Metropolitans faded away in 1924.
But a narrow vote by a suburban Phoenix council placed that notion on hold again.
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Many of the historic images published on Sportspress Northwest are provided by resident Northwest sports history aficionado David Eskenazi. Check out David’s Wayback Machine Archive. David can be reached at (206) 441-1900, or at seattlesportshistory@gmail.com
3 Comments
Very good, concise piece on hockey in Seattle. There have been some great teams and players over the years, but financial concerns have almost always at least lurked in the background when they weren’t onstage.
Point of information: The Thunderbirds aren’t a pro team. They’re a Canadian Major Junior team with mostly teens and three 20-year-olds developing for a future career in pro hockey. They get monthly living stipends and billet with a network of local families, but no salaries because they’re technically amateurs. The Breakers/T-Birds have had some very good players over the years, but the paychecks didn’t start until after they’d left Seattle.
Thanks for responding. We appreciate it.
That period from September 1976 to April 1977 witnessed the beginnings of both the Seahawks and Mariners. That would have been something for the Totems to begin NHL play in October of that same timeframe. Three new teams joining the Sonics and Sounders in just a matter of months. Doesn’t happen like that anymore…
What I’ve never been able to reconcile was the Ackerley’s support for the cheaper, limited, anti-hockey Coliseum revamp versus their earlier (preferred?) plan for the so called Ackerley Arena where Safeco Field now sits. My understanding was that facility would have been built with hockey in mind, indicating the family was not anti-hockey. Was that arena plan perhaps just a negotiating ploy? Anyway, I don’t have anything positive to say about the Ackerley’s, so I’ll just leave it at that.