Apple podcast title, The Deep Dive, the 1965
-66 NHL season expansion drama, Stolen Jerseys,
and the Original Six Era. Welcome to another
tailored deep dive. Today we're lacing up our
skates to explore the historic 1965 -66 NHL season.
From Bobby Hall and Gordie Howe smashing records
on the ice to the bitter boardroom battles that
shaped modern hockey expansion, we extract the
most fascinating nuggets from this pivotal year
in sports history. Discover why the St. Louis
Blues owe their existence to a real estate deal,
how a stolen uniform heist forced the Detroit
Red Wings to play in junior sweaters, and the
birth of American network playoff television.
A perfect shortcut to being well -informed on
the dramatic twilight of the Original Six era.
SEO Keywords 1965 -66 NHL Season Original Six
Stanley Cup Gordie Howe Bobby Hull Hockey History
Montreal Canadiens Detroit Red Wings NHL Expansion
Welcome to another custom tailored deep dive.
Today we're actually lacing up our skates. Stepping
right onto the ice. Exactly. We are heading back
in time to a very specific, incredibly transformative
moment in sports history. We're looking at the
1965 -1966 NHL season. And our source material
for this journey today is an extensive Wikipedia
breakdown of that exact year. Right. And our
mission here is to extract the most vital, the
most surprising and honestly, some downright
bizarre facts. We want to prove to you that sports
history is, well, it's just as much about boardroom
backstabbing and wild logistical nightmares as
it is about, you know. athletic glory. Oh, absolutely.
And to really understand why this specific year
matters to you, even if you aren't a diehard
hockey historian, you have to look at the baseline
of what the sport was at that exact moment. Yeah,
set the scene for us. So this is the 49th season
of the National Hockey League. We're talking
about the dramatic twilight of the classic Original
Six era. Which, for anyone who might be catching
up on their hockey lore, you might hear Original
Six and think it refers to like... The dawn of
time. The 1920s or something. Yeah. But by 1965,
it just meant the league had been operating for
decades with only six exclusive franchises. You
had the Montreal Canadiens, the Toronto Maple
Leafs, the Boston Bruins, the Detroit Red Wings,
the Chicago Blackhawks, and the New York Rangers.
Just six teams. That's it. And they played this
grueling 70 -game schedule against each other
all winter long. It was an incredibly insular
regional business. Very regional. But the foundations
of the massive, continent -spanning, multibillion
-dollar league we know today, they were being
aggressively and sometimes ruthlessly laid down
right in the middle of this specific season.
Which perfectly brings us to the front office.
Because in February of 1966, the NHL made a monumental
announcement. A total game changer. It changed
the landscape of the sport forever. They awarded
six conditional franchises slated to begin play
in 1967. They were effectively doubling the size
of the league overnight. Go from 6 to 12. Right.
And they announced teams for Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Philadelphia,
Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. Now looking at that
list. Yeah. Five of those cities had thriving
markets. Made total sense for a sport. expansion
but st louis right how does a city without a
formal bid suddenly find itself with a professional
hockey franchise the sheer audacity of the st
louis inclusion is i mean it's one of the great
open secrets of stork's capitalism you are entirely
correct there had been no formal application
from the city of st louis none at all none No
local ownership group put a passionate bid together.
No one begged the NHL for a team. The franchise
was essentially forced into existence to fulfill
the personal financial wishes of two men. And
who were they? James D. Norris and Arthur Wurtz.
OK, so how did Norris and Wurtz have the power
to just manifest a major sports franchise out
of thin air? Well, Norris and Wurtz were the
owners of the Chicago Blackhawks. So they already
held massive influence over the league's board
of governors. But crucially, they also happened
to own the St. Louis Arena. Ah, okay. It was
a massive aging building, a major financial liability
for them, and it was an asset they desperately
wanted to sell off. So the strategy was, if you
want to unload a massive empty sports arena,
the best way to make it an attractive real estate
purchase is to... Ensure there's a brand new
professional sports team contractually obligated
to play inside it. That is wild. They leveraged
their immense power within that original... Boys
Club to grant St. Louis a team purely for their
own real estate game. So it wasn't about growing
the game at all. Not even a little bit. It was
about flipping a building. And sadly, James D.
Norris actually died of a heart attack in late
February of that year, right around the time
this incredible, somewhat cynical expansion maneuvering
was coming to fruition. It's just wild to think
about. A city gets a major cultural touchstone
because two guys in another city needed to balance
their real estate portfolio. Exactly. And the
stark contrast to that is what happened out west.
Vancouver had a prime market, a rabid fan base,
and a very strong formal bid ready to go. A bid
that made total sense on paper. Right. Yet they
were flat out rejected by the league. And the
anger in Canada over this was intense. It escalated
all the way to the top. The Prime Minister of
Canada at the time, Lester Pearson, actually
formally protested the NHL's decision. Yeah,
it became a national political issue. So Vancouver
had everything going for it. Why on earth would
the league actively sabotage a Canadian rival?
The answer, as it often is, was television money.
Of course it was! A rumor spread very quickly
through the press, and it was actually fueled
by a corroborating statement from the Toronto
Maple Leafs general manager, Punch Imlach. He
said that the owners in Toronto and Montreal
had explicitly vetoed Vancouver's bid. So they
just blocked them to keep them out of the club.
They blocked them because of broadcast revenue.
Toronto and Montreal had a deep dislike for the
idea of sharing the proceeds from the television
broadcasts of the games. Because they'd have
to split it. Right. Think about the lucrative
Canadian television market at that time, primarily
Hockey Night in Canada. The pie was currently
being split among a very small group. And if
Vancouver enters the league, that television
pie has to be sliced thinner. Exactly. They wanted
to keep the revenue divided among fewer Canadian
teams. Now, Vancouver would eventually get their
NHL franchise, but this boardroom blockade forced
them to wait until 1970. Wow. And this corporate
tension wasn't just happening at the billionaire
ownership level either. It was reaching all the
way down to teenagers playing amateur hockey.
Yeah, the draft dispute. Right. There was a massive
draft dispute brewing behind the scenes that
season. For the second consecutive year, the
Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, the CAH,
was demanding an end to the NHL system of sponsoring
junior ice hockey teams. Right. And to put this
in perspective for you today, when we think of
a sports draft, we think of a massive, glamorous,
televised spectacle. Young athletes walk up to
a podium, put on a hat and become instant millionaires.
Right. The modern draft. But in 1965, the NHL
operated a direct farm system. NHL teams directly
sponsored junior clubs. That meant they essentially
owned the professional rights to the teenagers
playing on those teams. Just by funding the local
club. Exactly. And the CAA president, Lionel
Flurry, wanted to break that monopoly. He wanted
players who graduated from junior hockey to be
chosen in a fair league -wide amateur draft.
Rather than being permanently tied to the specific
NHL team that happened to sponsor their local
junior club? Yes. He actually went as far as
asking the NHL to terminate their existing professional
agreement right then and there, instead of waiting
for it to naturally expire in 1968. And I'm guessing
the NHL wasn't thrilled about that. Naturally,
they pushed back hard against losing their free
pipeline of talent. NHL president Clarence Campbell
flat out declined to terminate the agreement.
His reasoning was brutally pragmatic. I sure
was. 95 % of all NHL players at that time were
produced by those sponsored junior teams. The
league had total control. So they weren't going
to just give that up. No. Campbell said a draft
might be viable eventually, but the NHL had their
own demands. They wanted to draft players at
an even younger age than 20. Oh, wow. And they
wanted to continue making financial payments
directly to the amateur teams rather than handing
the funds over to the CAH to disperse as the
association saw fit. So it was a total stalemate
over who controlled the bodies and futures of
these young athletes. Yeah, and it didn't get
resolved until a new agreement was finally hammered
out in August of 1966. Okay, so with all this
front office chaos, real estate scams, television
vetoes, battles over teenagers, you have to wonder
if it bled onto the ice. Did the actual gameplay
look different this season compared to the years
prior? It did, actually, and it started with
something as fundamental as how many guys were
allowed on the bench. Right. The only significant
rule change for the 1965 -66 season was a new
requirement that teams had to suit up two goaltenders
for each game. Wait, so before this, relying
on a single goaltender for an entire 60 -minute
game with maybe an unqualified emergency backup
sitting in the stands eating a hot dog that was
just the standard operating procedure. It was
the norm. If a goalie took a puck to the face,
the game would stop, they'd stitch him up in
the back room and push him right back out onto
the ice. That is brutal. Mandating two suited
professional goaltenders reflects a growing awareness
of player safety, the intense physical toll the
game takes, and, you know, just standardizing
roster management to prevent absolute farces
if a goalie got seriously injured. Speaking of
absolute farces, we have to talk about January
1966. Oh, the Jersey heist. Yes. Because this
might be one of the funniest logistical nightmares
in professional sports history. The Detroit Red
Wings traveled to Montreal to play the Canadians.
And the night before the game, someone breaks
into the visitor's dressing room at the legendary
Montreal Forum and completely cleans them out.
Everything. They steal all of the Detroit Red
Wings game jerseys. Imagine you are a professional
original six hockey team. Yeah. You are on the
road in hostile territory. And you wake up on
game day with absolutely nothing to wear. The
panic must have been unbelievable. So the Red
Wings had a junior farm team located in Hamilton,
Ontario, the Hamilton Red Wings. Detroit management
had to call up the junior team, commandeer their
teenage -sized sweaters, and have them express
shipped all the way to Montreal just in time
for the puck drop. It's incredible. I want you
to picture this. You have hardened, massive professional
athletes, absolute titans of the sport like Gordie
Howe, trying to squeeze their shoulder pads into
tight, stiff, borrowed junior sweaters just to
skate out in front of thousands of screaming
Montreal fans. It completely punctures the incredibly
serious corporate image the NHL was trying to
project with all their multi -million dollar
expansion talks. Right. You can have all the
boardroom power in the world, but sometimes your
locker room gets robbed. And your superstars
have to play in borrowed teenage wool. And despite
the wardrobe malfunctions, the on -ice performances
that season were legendary. We saw some massive
individual milestones. Oh, for sure. In November,
wearing his proper uniform, Gordie Howe scored
his 600th NHL goal. And fittingly, he did it
in Montreal. in a 3 -2 loss to the Canadians.
Even the fiercely loyal local Montreal fans gave
him a standing ovation. Which says a lot about
his legacy. We also saw Toronto's Frank Mihaljevic
hit his 250th career goal, while Boston's Johnny
Busick and Montreal's Claude Provost both hit
their 200th. But the guy who absolutely defined
the regular season was Chicago's Bobby Hull.
You mentioned earlier he had a record -breaking
year. Just how dominant was he out there? Bobby
Hull's 1965 -66 campaign. is one for the history
books. He was a force of nature. He set a brand
new NHL record for goals in a single season,
finding the back of the net 54 times. 54 goals.
Yeah. He also set a new record for total points
in a season with 97. That performance earned
him the Art Ross Trophy as the league's top scorer
and his second straight heart trophy as the league's
most valuable player. 54 goals and 43 assists
in just 65 games played. That is a blistering
pace. To give you some context on just how far
ahead of the curve Hull was from his position
as a left winger, no left winger would lead the
NHL in points again until Alexander Ovechkin
did it in the 2007 -2008 season. No way! Yeah,
that is a gap of over 40 years. Hull was playing
a style of offensive hockey that was decades
ahead of its time. It's no surprise he was named
to the first All -Star team alongside his Chicago
team. teammates, Stan Mikita, who actually finished
second in overall league scoring with 78 points.
But, you know, for every team setting records
and flying high, there is a team struggling just
to keep its head above water. Yeah, the Rangers.
For the New York Rangers, this season was a brutal
slog. There was a brief glimmer of hope early
in the year when their rookie goaltender, Ed
Giacomen, put together a really exciting six
-game unbeaten streak. The New York fans were
thrilled. But the magic evaporated quickly. The
Rangers had major inexperience playing back at
the blue line. The defensemen, whose primary
job is to hold off the attacking forwards, their
defense just couldn't protect Gia Komen. They
started losing consistently, fell out of playoff
contention early, and the collapse cost their
head coach, Red Sullivan, his job. Right. Emile
Francis was brought in to take over behind the
bench. But they were a sinking ship, ultimately
finishing second to last in the league with only
47 points. And beyond the standings, there was
a stark human element to the Rangers' struggles.
Their star forward, Rod Gilbert, was facing a
devastating medical setback. He had to undergo
a second spinal fusion surgery if he ever wanted
to play professional hockey again. The physical
toll of the sport in that era was incredibly
steep, and the Rangers desperately missed Gilbert's
offensive production while he was recovering.
It's tough. We also saw the end of an era for
another legend that season. The career of future
Hall of Famer Ted Lindsey officially came to
a close when his request for reinstatement as
an active player was coldly vetoed by the Toronto
ownership. So it really was a season defined
by extreme highs and crushing lows. When the
dust settled on the 70 -game schedule, Montreal
finished at the very top of the regular season
standings with 90 points. Dominant year for them.
They were followed by Chicago, Toronto, and Detroit.
Boston and New York missed the cut entirely.
This set the stage for the postseason, where
only the top four teams qualified to compete
for the Stanley Cup. First place played third
place, and second played fourth. But before we
get to the actual tournament, we have to talk
about how the fans at home were experiencing
it. Because 1966 represented a massive leap forward
for hockey broadcasting, didn't it? It was a
watershed moment for the visibility of the sport.
Up in Canada... Hockey Night in Canada on CBC
Television was continuing its beloved tradition
of televising Saturday night regular season games
as well as the playoffs. They also started producing
Wednesday night regular season telecasts for
the CTV network, though it's an amusing historical
footnote that they typically didn't broadcast
the games in their entirety. Oh, really? What
did they do? They usually just joined the live
feed in progress, which was actually a standard
broadcasting practice until a few years later.
That's so funny to think about now. But the real
breakthrough, the one that the owners were likely
salivating over, was in the United States. NBC
agreed to air the 1966 Sunday afternoon playoff
games. The importance of that NBC deal cannot
be overstated. This marked the first time since
the 1959 -1960 season that the NHL aired nationally
in the U .S. Wow. But even more historically
significant, it was the first time ever that
NHL postseason games aired on American network
television. First time ever. Yeah. The second
game of the semifinal series between Detroit
and Chicago was nationally televised on April
10th, and the clinching Game 6 of the Stanley
Cup Finals was broadcast across RKO General Loan
stations. After decades of being a regional attraction,
the league was finally getting the massive American
exposure it had been fighting for. And the fans
tuning in across the continent got an absolute
show. Let's look at how the actual playoffs unfolded.
In the semifinals, for the fourth straight year,
The matchups were Montreal versus Toronto and
Detroit versus Chicago. Familiar foes. Very familiar.
Montreal came in as the dominant top seed, and
they made incredibly quick work of Toronto. It
was a clean four -game sweep. In Game 3, Montreal's
Jean Beliveau capped off a 5 -2 win with an empty
netter, which, for anyone new to the game, is
when the losing team pulls their goalie in the
final minutes to get an extra attacker on the
ice, leaving the net wide open. Classic move.
Then in game four, Jules Tremblay scored two
power play goals, capitalizing when Toronto had
a man in the penalty box to help seal a 4 -1
victory. Montreal was operating like a machine.
Meanwhile, the Detroit -Chicago series was a
massive, stunning upset. Chicago was the powerhouse
second seed. They had Bobby Hull coming off his
historic record -breaking season and the legendary
Glenn Hall in net. They sounded unstoppable.
Detroit was the underdog fourth seed. But Detroit
completely stunned Chicago, winning the series
four games to two. Game two was an absolute demolition
broadcast on national television. Detroit won
7 -0 at Chicago Stadium. 7 -0 against the second
seed. That is insane. Detroit's goaltender, Roger
Crozier, pitched a perfect shutout. He didn't
let a single puck pass him all game. And offensive
guys like Floyd Smith and Andy Bathgate absolutely
dominated the ice. Which brings us to the ultimate
prize. The Stanley Cup finals. You have the defending
champion Montreal Canadiens going up against
the underdog Detroit Red Wings. Montreal had
won 18 out of 28 possible points against Detroit
during the regular season. Everyone thought it
would be a sweep. Every pundit expected Montreal
to roll right over them. But Detroit came out
swinging. They took a shocking 2 -0 series lead,
winning both of those opening games right there
in the hostile Montreal form. And the undisputed
architect of that shocking lead was Detroit's
goaltender, Roger Crozier. He'd actually missed
parts of the regular season dealing with an illness,
but he returned for the playoffs and was absolutely
brilliant. A total wall. He stood on his head
in Game 1, anchoring a tight 3 -2 victory. Then
he locked it down again in a 5 -2 win in Game
2, where Detroit spread the offense around. Andy
Bathgate, Bruce McGregor, Ab McDonald, Floyd
Smith, and Dean Prentice all found the back of
the net. Detroit was suddenly just two wins away
from hoisting the cup. But then came the turning
point. The series shifted back to Detroit for
Game 3, and Montreal fought back hard with a
4 -2 win thanks to two crucial third period goals
from Gilles Tremblay. But the real disaster for
Detroit, the moment that changed hockey history,
happened in Game 4. Oh, this is rough. Roger
Crozier, the goalie who had been carrying the
entire team on his back, suffered an injury on
the ice. When Crozier went down, the momentum
of the entire series violently shifted. You cannot
overstate the psychological and tactical blow
of losing your hot goaltender in the middle of
the Stanley Cup Finals. He's devastating. Montreal
capitalized on the panic immediately. They won
Game 4 with a tight 2 -1 score, with Jean -Beliveau
scoring a critical power play goal. Then they
blew the doors off Detroit in Game 5, winning
5 -1 back in Montreal. And that set up a do or
die game six back at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.
It was a total nail biter. Jean Beliveau scored
in the first period for Montreal. Detroit's Norm
Ullman tied it on a power play in the second.
Floyd Smith actually gave Detroit the lead in
the third. But Montreal wasn't done. No, they
tied it back up, forcing the game into sudden
death overtime. And at 2 .20 of the first overtime
period, Henri Richard scored the game winner.
The Montreal Canadiens won the game 3 -2, taking
the series four games to two. claiming their
second consecutive Stanley Cup. It was a heartbreaking
end for Detroit, a franchise that wouldn't return
to the Stanley Cup finals again until 1995. But
there was a highly unique silver lining for them.
What was that? Despite losing the series, Roger
Crozier was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy for
playoff MVP. That is incredibly rare, isn't it,
for a player on the losing team to win MVP? It
is a testament to just how extraordinary his
performance was before he got hurt. To win the
most valuable player award as a member of the
losing team tells you everything you need to
know about his massive impact on the ice that
spring. We should also mention the Vizina Trophy
that year, given to the league's top goaltenders,
went to the Montreal duo of Gump Worsley and
Charlie Hodge, who secured an amazing 2 .36 and
2 .58 goals against average, respectively. Truly,
1966 was a year defined by the men in the crease,
the painted blue area right in front of the net
where the goalies live and work. So as we wrap
up this journey, let's bring it all back to you,
the listener. Why is the 1965 -66 NHL season
matter today? Because it wasn't just another
year in the record books. It was the exact hinge
upon which modern hockey swung. Perfectly said.
You had the sheer amateurish absurdity of stolen
jerseys and borrowed junior sweaters existing
in the exact same moment that the NHL was breaking
onto American network television. You had legendary,
unbreakable records being set by Gordie Howe
and Bobby Hall on the ice, while behind closed
doors, billionaires were orchestrating massive
multi -city expansions purely to sell aging real
estate and hoard broadcast revenue. It is the
perfect chaotic snapshot of a sport transitioning
from a gritty regional pastime into a massive
polished corporate empire. When you look at how
the NHL operates today, or really any major professional
sports league, it gives you an entirely new lens.
We love the romance of the game. We look back
and celebrate the undeniable on -ice heroics
of players like Hull, Mikita, Bolivio, and Crozier.
But this deep dive leaves you with an important
question to mull over next time you watch a game.
What's that? How much of the sports world we
consume right now, from which cities are deemed
worthy of having teams, to the massive televised
spectacle of who gets drafted, to which networks
allow us to watch the games, is secretly dictated
by forgotten real estate deals and behind closed
doors revenue hoarding, exactly like the St.
Louis of Vancouver. dramas of 1965 the players
and the uniforms change but the boardroom brawls
are forever thank you so much for joining us
on this deep dive into the 1965 -66 NHL season
keep your sticks on the ice and we will catch
you next time