In 1975–76, our first full season in the Civic Center, an average of 9,380 people came downtown on game night. That was second-highest in the WHA that year, just behind Quebec. The Nordiques were an exciting team with French flair, and Marc Tardif was setting the world on fire with 71 goals and 148 points. The league had clearly found a part of its identity in major scoring stars and rugged brawlers. Ulf Nilsson and Anders Hedberg had arrived the year before to play on the “Hot Line” with Bobby Hull, perhaps the greatest line in hockey history, and the European style was beginning to brand our league. Eleven players, including Hull and Gordie Howe, had 100 points or more, and six players broke the 50-goal plateau. But the WHA also had nine players with 200 or more minutes in penalties, and two, Curt Brackenbury and Kim Clackson, with more than 350 — nearly five minutes per game. Ron Busniuk, who came to us partway through that season after Minnesota folded, had 205 minutes, the first time a Whaler’s name was associated with 200 or more minutes.
Things never stayed still in the WHA, and we started the 1975–76 season with 14 teams again, with the Denver Spurs and Cincinnati Stingers as expansion franchises, and with the Vancouver Blazers having moved to Calgary. But the Spurs were a bust in Denver, and the day after New Year’s had to move to Ottawa, where they became the Civics. The Civics lasted a mere two weeks before they folded. And in late February the Minnesota Fighting Saints were disbanded. The players were disbursed to other teams, but it was nerve-wracking for the rest of the franchises, creating scheduling and legal nightmares and casting an air of instability over the league.
The WHA was still a 12-team league, but it was being driven by Canada: Edmonton, Winnipeg, Quebec and Calgary. One third of the league was north of the border, which was a much higher percentage than the NHL had (3 of 17) at the time.
I’ve always disagreed with those who say that Canadian teams aren’t attractions in the bigger American cities. When Winnipeg had Hedberg, Nilsson and Hull, everybody knew about the Jets. Nobody had any trouble figuring out who Edmonton was once they had a great team, or the Nordiques when they excelled. We established and nurtured great rivalries in the WHA. In Hartford we sold out many a game against Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Birmingham, where you didn’t have “natural” rivalries already existing. It was a competitive and well-balanced league.
We had a good post-season in 1975–76, averaging 10,100 fans per game after sweeping Cleveland in the first round, and then beating Indianapolis in seven games in the next round to advance to meet Houston in the semifinal. The Howes’ Aeros had won the last two Avco cups and still had their mojo, edging us in the seventh game in Houston to go to the final. There they were swept by the Jets, who won the final two games at home by a total of 15–4. It was the first WHA title for the Jets, who would also win two of the next, and final, three Avco cups.
The fourth season of the WHA was over. We didn’t know it then, but that was the middle year of our rebel league’s life span. The more stable and better-financed franchises like Winnipeg, New England and Quebec were having success on the ice and at the gate, but most teams were losing big money, and franchises were moving or folding with alarming frequency.
Change was definitely in the air.
The First Go at Pittsburgh
We were selling the WHA as if it was going to keep going on, and we sold it well. Our fans loved it, and they kept showing up at 9,000 or 10,000 a night, even in 1975–76 and 1976–77, the New England Whalers’ only two seasons below .500. Of course, it didn’t hurt that we managed to make the third round of the playoffs in the spring of ’76.
Two teams dropped out in the middle of that season and two more moved before the start of the 1976–77 season: Johnny Bassett transferred Toronto to Birmingham, where they became the Bulls, and Cleveland went to St. Paul to become the second incarnation of the Minnesota Fighting Saints. Yet, once again, Minnesota dropped out during the season, earning the nickname “the Folding Saints.”
It’s important to know about the mindset of my corporate partners at this time. The mandate from them, led by Don Conrad, had become, “We’ve got to get out of this league.” It was clear that the league was shrinking every year. My partners were Fortune 500 companies and didn’t want the uncertainty every spring about whether the league would be able to continue to operate. And at the time we were losing money. Not a lot, but we were losing.
By then, the Whalers had become leaders of the league, which benefited Hartford. The partners told me to try to make a merger happen or to find some other way to get out of the league. So we went down a couple of different paths: the merger path and the sub rosa path, which was to try to pick off an NHL franchise under distress, buy it, and jump leagues.
Which leads me to a story that not too many people know about.
Ed DeBartolo Sr. bought the Pittsburgh Penguins from Al Savill in February 1977. I soon reached out to Mr. DeBartolo about the possibility of acquiring the team from him. He referred me to his associate, Vincent Bartimo. Think Charles Bronson . . . and that’s Bartimo. Cap and I met Bartimo at the Boston Airport, and to make a long story short, we did a deal to buy the Penguins. We were going to pay $4 million for the team.
I had the Aetna and the other partners all set, but on a Saturday morning Mr. DeBartolo called me, and I will never forget this call, as it plays a role in how I ended up owning part of the Penguins nearly 15 years later.
“Howard,” he said, “we can’t do the deal.”
“Okay,” I said. “But why?”
“My lawyers tell me, and I’m sure when you really dive into it your lawyers will tell you too, that we’ll be sued for the next 20 years because the WHA will go out of business if New England leaves. My people and my league will never allow the sale. We just have to walk away from it. Now, I want your word that this will never get out.”
I said it never would, and it never has. Until now.
I reported back to my partners, and they said we just had to continue trying to operate. The league was doing some cutting-edge things. For example, we had regular-season overtime. And because the league would be shrinking in size, we did play games that counted in our standings against European teams like the Czech All-Stars and the Soviet All-Stars. We were doing everything we could to make the league as interesting and exciting as possible. And Bill MacFarland had taken over as president, which was viewed very positively.
Letting Loose South of the Border
The one thing we all did in the WHA was have a hell of a lot of fun. We may have fought in the boardroom, but we all liked each other and when the meeting ended we would go arm in arm to a restaurant together and enjoy a nice evening out.
There were some hysterical moments at some of our league meetings. One of them was when the league was starting to get embroiled in lawsuits from disgruntled former owners.
At the annual meeting in La Costa, California, at the end of our fourth season, there was suddenly a loud knock at the conference-room door. In walked three or four armed sheriff’s deputies carrying boxes of lawsuit material. This particular suit had come from Dr. Leonard Bloom, an early owner of the Los Angeles Sharks, who had also been part of the ABA and signed Wilt Chamberlain for his San Diego franchise. He’d sued the ABA too.
Johnny Bassett and I had become great friends by then. He came from a sports family — his father, John, had been a minority owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs and had cast the deciding vote to chase majority owner Harold Ballard into fraud charges. Johnny had played on Canada’s Davis Cup team and was a film producer. Eventually, I would do my first film with him.
Once the initial shock of the incoming lawsuit had passed, Johnny and I just looked at each other and burst out laughing and decided it was time to leave the meeting and let loose. So we arranged to rent a car, then had too much to drink and said, “Let’s head down to Tijuana,” which was maybe an hour away, but with an international border in between.
O
n the way down, with Johnny driving, we got caught for speeding.
Johnny explained that he was a Canadian and unfamiliar with the road laws in the U.S. The cop let him off with a warning.
We kept on going, crossed the border into Mexico, and found a seedy-looking bar with dirt floors and started enjoying the tequila. We couldn’t have been dressed more inappropriately for the setting. I was wearing white pants, a white shirt and my New England Whalers blazer, and Johnny was dressed in his blue blazer. We looked totally out of place. At two in the morning, we decided to leave in order to make it to our next meeting in La Costa, which was at 9 a.m. I said I needed to hit the head before we left, but that I wasn’t going to go in the bar’s bathroom, because it was so dirty.
I was standing beside the car taking a leak on the dirt parking lot and all of a sudden I felt these arms grabbing me, and it’s these two military policemen. They said, “You don’t take a leak in our parking lot.” I’m thinking, “Oh my God, here we are. ‘Two WHA Owners Get Arrested’. . .” and I started mentally writing the next day’s headlines. I said I was sorry, but they were still going to take me to jail.
We were hammered, but Johnny collects himself and he brings out this huge wad of cash and says, “We’re going to settle this right now, boys.” He takes the guy’s hand and he slaps down a twenty in his palm. And another twenty. And another twenty until he gets up to 100. Then he folds the guy’s hand up and says, “That’s enough for taking a leak in a government parking lot in Tijuana. Comprende? Baldy, get in the car, we’re going home.” Those guys just stood there, and the looks on their faces said they couldn’t believe these two preppy guys had just pulled what they had.
We fled the premises, crossed the border and immediately got arrested again. We were flying because we had to make the meeting, and 10 miles past the border a cop stopped us for speeding. And boy, he was a hard-ass. Johnny was driving, again, so he says to the guy, “Are you a football fan?” And the cop says, “Oh yeah!” So Johnny says, “Well, I’m the guy who signed Csonka, Kiick and Warfield.” And it had just been on the cover of Sports Illustrated. The cop says, “No, you’re not.” Then he looks at Johnny, thinks about it a bit, and says, “Okay, I’m going to take your word for it.” And we got off again.
We had about an hour to shower and shave and we made the meeting by 9 a.m.
When it’s called to order, Johnny puts up his hand and says, “I’m going to tell everybody here the story . . . and then I’m going to pass the hat, because we just saved this league a lot of embarrassment! We’re going to have a special league assessment right now because our illustrious partner here just took a hundred-dollar leak in Tijuana.” The room broke up with raucous laughter and everybody kicked in.
As I said, those were the fun days.
And Howe! (And Howe, and Howe)
One day early in the fall of 1976, I received a call from George Bolin, who owned the Houston Aeros of the WHA.
Do you remember Rock Hudson in the movie Giant? If you do, well, that’s George: blue jeans, big belt buckle, Stetson, cowboy boots.
“Howard,” George said, “I can’t take it anymore. Colleen Howe’s driving me crazy. So I’m trading the Howes to you right now. They’re all yours.”
I started to say, “George, what . . .” But he just hung up the phone.
Gordie, Mark and Marty Howe were starting the fourth year of the four-year deal they had in Houston. People knew they were discontented there, and Colleen, who acted as the agent for her sons and husband, was pushing for the Aeros to do the right thing by her family — either sign them for what they were worth, or trade them. We quickly learned that a trade was not possible. Gordie had never been traded in his career and didn’t want to start now. Plus the Howes were honorable people and wanted to abide by their four-year commitment to Houston.
Colleen could be absolutely relentless, and George just didn’t understand her.
She was years ahead of her time. She was a staunch advocate for Gordie and the boys, and they could not have had a better agent than her. She was the first female to do this kind of job, and the fact that she was also the wife and mother didn’t make it easier. Added to that, clearly George was a male chauvinist and had a hard time dealing with Colleen running point on the negotiations. He’d even hired a psychiatrist to pose as an accountant during negotiations because he was so puzzled by Colleen.
We had never had a pre-established star with the Whalers, and I had always mentioned to George that if he was thinking of trading Gordie, I’d be interested. After he called me, Ronnie Ryan, who was our GM then, said, “He can’t be serious. Let’s just see what happens.”
Then my phone rang again, and it was Colleen. She had a really good sense of humor about it all, and she asked, “Did you happen to get a phone call from George Bolin?”
“Yes I did, Colleen, and I want you to know that I had nothing to do with this other than to take the call.”
She said, “We can’t wait to negotiate with you, when it’s time to negotiate. But we’re going to make them pay the Howes for this coming year. We’re not going anywhere, and I just wanted you to know that.”
We then shared a good laugh over Bolin.
I was very amenable to that plan. We knew that Boston was going to react strongly, because Mark was drafted by Boston and we knew they wanted him in the worst way. Detroit still owned Gordie’s NHL rights (and we later made a gentleman’s agreement with them not to claim him back when we joined the NHL) and Montreal owned Marty’s rights. Everybody assumed that Mark Howe would be going to the Bruins after the Houston deal was up, and if he went there they would have created a chance for Marty there too. We really wanted them in Hartford but thought we had very little chance. The Howes knew as much as I did about the potential merger with the NHL that we were working on that season. They knew that if they were in Houston and Houston didn’t get into the NHL in the merger, they’d probably go to Boston because they would have no choice.
My pitch was that we wanted all four of them in Hartford.
“Colleen, I want you in the office with me. We’re going to market the family. This is just not one young man signing to play hockey. We want Gordie involved, we want Marty, we want you in the office. We want the family.”
At the time we weren’t doing as well on the ice as we had been, so we needed a jolt and something to add enthusiasm not only to the fan base but, overall, to the mind-set of my partners as well. Signing the Howes would be a huge coup all the way around.
The negotiations took time and weren’t easy.
I think if you asked Mark or Marty, they’d say we won it because we pitched for the family. I genuinely liked Colleen. She knew it, and I think Gordie knew it. I respected the hell out of the fact that she was years ahead of her time. She could drive you nuts at times, but I loved her. She worked hard for her children and for her family. She was a good person and she had a terrific sense of humor, which helped.
I remember one time they came into Hartford and my son, Howard Jr., was about five, and he had these new cowboy boots. We were driving to the airport and Colleen said, “Those are nice boots, did your dad get them for you?” “Yeah,” he said. “These are my shit-kickers.” She got the biggest kick out of it.
That spring we lost in the first round of the playoffs and Houston was eliminated in the second round, so by mid-May the Howes were finished with their contracts and had gone to a friend’s farm back near Detroit. And negotiations began, not only with us but with Boston as well.
After some long back-and-forth negotiations, I finally said to Colleen, “We are going to come to Detroit and stay with it until we get it done.”
I sent Jack Kelley and Davie Andrews to Detroit on a Wednesday and told them to call me when it was getting close. Poor Jack, he was old-school, and he didn’t have a whole lot of patience for these kinds of protracted negotiations.
After t
wo days of their discussions in Detroit, Jack and Davie called me and said, “You come in. Now is the time to either get this done, or end it.” I could tell they were right out of gas on it.
I went to Detroit immediately and drove out to the farm, and there was Colleen in the middle of a field with some llamas. There was also a goat. And as I was climbing over the fence to go see her, I got attacked by the goat and it bit me on the side of the leg. (At our first press conference she gave me a figurine of a goat to commemorate the event.)
After a wonderful dinner all together, we went back to the hotel to try to close the deal. At around midnight Gordie could sense that I was running out of gas too. He stood up and said to Colleen, “Let’s go in the other room and talk it over.”
Jack and Davie and I sat there, and within half an hour the door opened and Colleen said, “Congratulations, you’ve got yourself some Howe hockey players.”
We were elated as well as exhausted, particularly Jack and Davie, who had a two-day jump on me.
I knew it would take a while to get them on a formal contract. The Howes were not quick in this area, and in fact when we got into the NHL, all three Howes played on WHA contracts for a while — probably the only players ever to play in the NHL without NHL contracts. But I knew the most important thing for me to do was get the deal announced quickly because I didn’t want anyone changing their minds. I knew the Bruins would make a last-ditch effort to sweep in so I said, “Colleen, we have to announce this at the beginning of next week.” And she went right along with it.
Unbeknownst to me, they apparently didn’t call the Bruins at all to tell them they had signed with the Whalers, or if they did they just left a message. That didn’t help my relationship with the Bruins during merger talks with the NHL.
Slim and None Page 11