Slim and None

by Howard Baldwin

  The deal was for 10 years — 350 grand a year for Mark, for Marty and for us to be able to market the family. When Gordie decided to play, we paid him an extra 100K per year. At first we weren’t 100 per cent certain Gordie would play, because he was 49 and was making his mind up every season during training camp — but, that said, we were 99 per cent sure he would play!

  This was a huge moment for us. We already had 4,000 or 5,000 season tickets and had never played before for less than a 75 per cent paid house, and now we had the Howes. It was good for season tickets and just general fan interest. We had a great press conference on the Monday, and it was the biggest announcement that the Whalers ever made.

  Merge Ahead

  At some point in the early winter of 1977, Don Conrad reached out through a mutual friend to Arthur Wirtz, owner of the Blackhawks and Bill’s father, with the hope of opening some dialogue regarding the NHL and WHA merging.

  So a dinner was organized at Arthur Wirtz’s home in Chicago, with Arthur, Bill, Don Conrad and me. Clearly, Mr. Wirtz Sr. was fed up with losing money. As hard as it may be to believe today, the Blackhawks, Red Wings and even the Bruins were only drawing 4,000 to 5,000 people to some games. The sport was suffering and something had to be done.

  And while the WHA was constantly worried about teams moving and folding, the NHL was not immune to instability at that point either. Before the 1976–77 season, the NHL, which hadn’t had a franchise relocate in 42 years, had two site changes: the Kansas City Scouts moved to Denver and the California Golden Seals moved to Cleveland. And a rumored expansion to Denver and Seattle was killed.

  Up until that point, Bill Wirtz had been a hawk in regard to the WHA, but Arthur had clearly given him a mandate to see what he could do with the WHA guys. That’s when a committee from each league was formed.

  The WHA committee had Bill DeWitt, Nelson Skalbania and me. Bill was the owner of the Cincinnati Stingers and really wanted to get into the NHL. He is a great guy and now owns the St. Louis Cardinals of Major League Baseball. Bill would have been a great owner for the NHL too. For the NHL, the committee included Bill Wirtz, Gil Stein, Peter O’Malley, Sam Pollock and John Ziegler.

  We met in Montreal, because that’s where the NHL held their annual meetings in conjunction with the draft. The discussions we had after the first WHA season had been kept quiet, but people were well aware of the 1977 meetings. We tried to keep them secret but the media got wind of it right away, and everywhere Bill and I went we were followed. We’d pick up the Montreal papers the next day and they knew not only who we’d had dinner with, but also what we had to eat.

  Also, the lines were hardening. Harold Ballard referred to me in the paper as some “mackerel-snapper from Providence.” So, foolishly, instead of just shutting up, I said, “At least we don’t have a league of people who have gone to prison.” That made the headlines in Canada. I referred to Clarence Campbell too, I’m afraid. It was pretty heavy, but it was true. So then guys like Ziegler got mad at me, and I was wondering why they didn’t get mad at their own people.

  I saw Clarence Campbell, the NHL president, only once at any of those meetings, and it was quite a sighting. We were in his hotel suite, and he always travelled with his secretary, so there were two bedrooms off the suite. I’ll never forget this. It was me, Nelson and Bill, talking with Pollock, Wirtz and Ziegler, and the door opens and it was Clarence Campbell . . . completely naked. He walks casually through our room to the other bedroom and says, on the way, “Good evening, gentlemen!”

  I swear to God.

  Out of those meetings came a plan that, to this day, I think was brilliant. Six WHA teams were going to be admitted to the NHL, and it would be called an expansion in order to get around anti-trust issues. But of course it was a merger.

  Edmonton, Quebec, Winnipeg, Houston, Cincinnati and New England from the WHA would form our own division, and we would phase in with the existing NHL teams over five years.

  We all had to fill out application forms and file 18 copies with the league, one for every one of its teams. One Saturday morning I got a call from Mr. Campbell and he said, “We’ve got a problem.” I’m thinking to myself, “We’ve got more than one.” But apparently the Quebec Nordiques had filled out their application completely in French. I called Marcel Aubut, the Nordiques lawyer, and said, “You’re just trying to stick it up their ass!” Which he was. We did get all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed, but then in August, the militants — Ballard, Paul Mooney from Boston and Molson Brewery, the Canadiens owner — got their steam up and we were voted out of the NHL again. They pulled the plug and were able to undo all that we had done.

  So we got in in June and were out in August. Nice.

  It was after that decision that I took over as WHA president and we moved the league headquarters to Hartford. Everybody knew that the handwriting was on the wall for the WHA. Our ownership was the strongest in the league, without question, so the other teams felt that I was the guy to handle the NHL merger. Primarily, I was there to make sure that a merger got done, because without it, at some point we were all going to be toast. We were like Lily Tomlin in The Incredible Shrinking Woman — eventually we were all going down that little drain.

  It was during these merger discussions that we knew for sure we had to shrink the league. So we changed the way we handled franchise problems. When a team got into dire economic straits and had to surrender, not only would we not bail the owner out, we’d swoop in there, pay him two or three or four hundred grand and get fully signed releases. We wanted total transparency so nobody could say they were forced out of business and come after us legally. And there was nothing that the players’ union could do.

  That was our approach that spring and summer, when San Diego, Calgary and Phoenix dropped out. We didn’t bail them out, move them or seek expansion replacements. And those of us who knew we might be going on to the NHL one day improved our teams with players from the folded teams, as we did in New England with Dave Keon and John McKenzie from Minnesota. But some teams weren’t going to be able to go on; they just weren’t.

  So we opened the 1977–78 season with eight teams in only one division, and added some spice by playing all-star teams from the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia when they toured North America, and we counted the results in our standings.

  I wanted to be home for my family as much as possible, so I made a deal with the league that I would be president and wouldn’t take any salary, as long as I could charter a plane for the meetings far away so I could get right back to Hartford to take care of the family. Ron Ryan was the day-to-day head of operations for the league. My partners in Hartford were delighted that I was willing to do this, as they knew that without a healthy league, there would be no Whalers.

  After the NHL had voted us out in August 1977, we immediately had a WHA meeting in Toronto, and we all looked at each other and said, “Look, we’ve got to come up with a strategy that will kick these guys in the balls.” We wanted to attack them where they were most vulnerable in order to bring them back to the table and effect a merger.

  So part one of the plan was to sign underage juniors. I had already been fined $100,000 by the league (which I never paid) a couple of years earlier when we signed Gordie Roberts at the age of 17, when both we and the NHL had rules which said nobody under 20 could play in our leagues.

  And part two of the plan was to drive the prices of the NHL’s players as high as we could, and still not quite sign them ourselves. I remember sitting with Rod Gilbert in Don Conrad’s office and we offered him 175 grand a year for five years because it was time to give the Rangers a little message. The whole time I was saying to myself, “I hope to God this guy doesn’t take this contract.” And he didn’t. We targeted players from the NHL clubs that we knew had money, so they could afford to match our offers when we drove the price up. This also had a ripple effect with the other players that they were trying to sign. />
  What was most effective, however, was signing the 18- and 19-year-old junior players. That really got them.

  Ken Linseman was already challenging the NHL’s draft-age rules in Canadian courts when Johnny Bassett signed him as a 19-year-old junior in 1977. We knew exactly what we were doing on the Linseman thing. It was all orchestrated.

  Art Kaminsky represented Kenny and we knew he’d challenge our age requirements. We also knew it would be thrown out right away because Kenny was over 18 and he had a right to sign a contract. So we went into a Hartford court and Kenny and his father got an injunction against the WHA, so Kenny was allowed to play in Birmingham. Perfect. The ruling soon changed the way the NHL handled their junior draft too, but for us it was just what we needed at the time.

  We didn’t want to tick off the Canadian amateur hockey system, so I had to publicly fine Johnny for going against the league rules. Like my fine with Roberts, it was $100,000. And like my fine with Roberts, Johnny never paid it. I even went down to Birmingham to fine him, and from the outside it looked like we were battling, but really we were having the usual great time together.

  In typical Johnny fashion, he was portraying himself in the media as the victim in the case. “Look what I’m doing for Birmingham, and look what the league is doing to me.” So during the game Bulls fans are pounding on the door of the private box trying to get at me because I’d fined their beloved owner.

  Johnny was nervy and, like every WHA owner, he ran into lots of interesting situations regarding player personnel. In the league’s second year, Ken Dryden had taken a year off to go back to school because he was unhappy with the Montreal Canadiens’ contract offer. Johnny had him doing color commentary for the Toros, his Toronto franchise, and thought he had him ready to play for the team the next year. But when the Toros went down to play against the New York Golden Blades at the Cherry Hill Arena in Jersey, my first rink in the game, it took Ken about half an hour just to squeeze into the ridiculous press gondola. “There’s no way I’m playing in this league,” he said. “No way.” And Johnny would always laugh about it: “That goddamn game cost me my goaltender.”

  And the year after he signed Linseman, Johnny kept playing his role as a pain in the ass to the NHL by signing the six underage “Baby Bulls” — Gaston Gingras, Pat Riggin, Rob Ramage, Craig Hartsburg, Michel Goulet and Rick Vaive — which really helped get an agreement with the NHL. Today, people forget that great players came through the WHA and that’s what got the NHL to stay at the table to the point where we got a deal done.

  The Roof Collapse

  I was able to spend so much time on league-related business in 1977 because we had such a good and reliable staff with the Whalers. Davie Andrews was running the business operations, Bill Barnes was a terrific marketer, and my secretary, Camille Beck, was absolutely key to the organization. Ron Ryan was our general manager and Harry Neale behind the bench really had the team going. Al Smith was on his way to becoming the first-team All-Star goalie, and the Howes were playing great. We would eventually make it to the league finals against Winnipeg — Hull vs. Howe for the championship — which, sadly, the Jets won in four straight.

  By late November we were 15–1–1, and at the break for the All-Star Game in Quebec, we were still 25–11–3. It had become WHA standard that the night before the All-Star Game there would be a big banquet. I’d gone up there with Brewster Perkins, my old friend and classmate from Salisbury School, and we took part in all the festivities.

  At 6 a.m. the next day, the phone in my room woke me out of a deep sleep, and it was a radio reporter from Hartford. “The roof on the Hartford Civic Center has collapsed,” he said, and he wanted my reaction.

  But I figured it was too early in the morning and asked him to call back later.

  I just figured, “So the roof blew off. The roof blew off in Philly too, so probably some tar paper came off in Hartford and we’ll just fix it. No big deal.”

  Then the phone started ringing again and again, all reporters, and then Davie Andrews called and said, “Howard, this is a real mess here. This is bad.”

  I knew then that this was not the same as the Spectrum roof problem 10 years earlier. This time there was serious structural damage. We found out later that there was a faulty drainage system on the roof, and the extra weight of the frozen snow and ice from a 10-day storm caused the collapse.

  Luckily, it happened at 4 a.m. The night before, 7,000 people had been in the building for a UConn basketball game. There were reports that a falling bolt had almost hit a basketball fan, so maybe that should have been a warning. The closest anybody got to being hurt, though, was a homeless person whose sleep was interrupted by the noise of the collapse. He got a few minutes of national fame describing the horrific sound.

  I asked Davie to get everyone together and try to work it out with Springfield for a temporary place to play. It was a critical time in our relationship with the NHL, and everybody in the WHA knew that the continued health of the Whalers was critical if the league was going to have any chance with the NHL. In our Quebec hotel, my league partners were already begging us to find a way to continue. The tension was incredible.

  I then called Camille and had her arrange for a jet to come into Quebec and pick up Brewster and me. But a blizzard started pelting Quebec City, and I don’t like white-knuckle flights, which this one would be, if we could even get off the ground. I’d flown before with the pilot who was coming to get me, and he’s a great guy, but I was almost hoping that he would decide not to come in. But he did: he landed, collected us and took back off, the last plane allowed out of the airport for the next 24 hours. But it’s not as bad flying out of a blizzard as it is into one, and soon we hit blue sky.

  When we got near Hartford, the pilot said, “Howard, do you want to fly over the building?” I said, “Yeah,” still hoping it was not that big a deal.

  Wrong. It looked like a scene out of a Godzilla movie, with the left foot of Godzilla stomping on the roof of the Civic Center. It was just steel beams jutting up into the air.

  “Holy shit,” I said. “What a mess. We are so screwed.”

  The story had already gone national and dozens of reporters were waiting at the landing strip, but we emphasized that this was an emergency and told them we would have a formal press conference later.

  It was our front office’s finest hour. Bill and Dave had already nailed down the new Springfield Civic Center, and by late that evening we had a whole schedule worked out for the half-season left to play.

  We had a partnership meeting that night and the partners, led by Don Conrad, were extraordinary in their commitment to the franchise and to the city. I suggested that our options were either to give up and fold, or to fund losses while the Civic Center was rebuilt, however long that would take.

  Nobody missed a beat. They said, “This is a crippling blow to the city. But we sure aren’t losing a building and the team. We’re keeping the team here. So, Howard, you come to us with a plan.”

  We came back within 48 hours and, noting that there were only 7,800 seats in Springfield, suggested that all the partnership corporations could buy enough season tickets and sponsorships to ensure there were no losses until we got back to Hartford. And that’s what happened. They were 100 per cent behind me, and this should give some clear insight to anybody who has ever wondered why I stayed so loyal to those partners and to the City of Hartford.

  Within four days, we were in Springfield. Bill Barnes — who, as I have previously said, was a marketing genius — lived up to that reputation by creating the 91 Club, in reference to the highway Whalers fans took from Hartford to Springfield. The club created the perception of Whaler fans being extra-loyal ones, making the drive to see their team. At the first game in Springfield, the late, great Governor Ella Grasso, who was a devoted Whalers fan and a friend of mine, cut the ribbon to inaugurate what would be a two-year stay in Springfield. By
the time the Civic Center was rebuilt, the Whalers would be halfway through our first season in the NHL, so we had played our last WHA game in Hartford (a 5–4 overtime loss to Houston).

  Until we started writing this book, I hadn’t realized how little time we’d spent in Hartford as a WHA team. We didn’t get into the Civic Center until January of our third year, and the roof forced us out in January of our sixth year. And Springfield saved our asses a couple of times — before we moved into Hartford, and when the roof collapsed.

  My partners were at my side during the press conference when I said, “Even if it means flooding my own backyard on Prospect Avenue, this franchise is going to continue to operate and will not miss a beat.” The quote made just about every media outlet in North America.

  For me, it was one of the proudest moments for our franchise, the staff, the partners and the city.

  For the Whalers, in a way, the hockey gods had shone on us. We had only 10,500 seats in the Civic Center and the most we could have economically gone up to with a renovation was 12,500. But the NHL had a 14,500-minimum capacity rule at the time. We didn’t know if they would stick to that with us, but we were worried. When we had to rebuild, we could get the capacity up to 15,500, so without the roof collapse we may never have qualified to get into the NHL.

  The Whalers and ESPN

  The first time we came to Springfield, in 1974, we hired a charismatic fellow named Bill Rasmussen, the sports director of WWLP TV, as the commentator on our game broadcasts. He became Whalers’ director of communications and sold ads for us too. Sometime during the winter of 1978, we decided to go in a different direction with our advertising sales and were going to employ young people on a commission-only basis.

  So Bill and I both agreed it was necessary to part company. He gave me a big hug, said he understood completely and that he appreciated the way I’d handled it, we’d keep in touch, yada yada yada. I don’t like to burn bridges, and told him if there was anything I could ever to do help in the future, all he had to do was ask.