Apple podcast title, The Deep Dive, the 1978
-79 NHL season mergers, Soviets, and the last
original sixth dynasty. Apple podcast description.
Join us for a deep dive into the 1978 -79 NHL
season, a pivotal turning point in sports history.
We explore the Montreal Canadiens' incredible
Stanley Cup run, the shocking Cleveland Barons
merger, and the legendary 1979 Challenge Cup
against the Soviet Union. Discover how the retirement
of icons like Bobby Orr and Ken Dryden, combined
with massive changes in NHL broadcasting and
the looming WHA merger, reshaped the game forever.
Whether you're a hockey historian or just love
a fascinating bit, business turnaround story.
This deep dive unpacks the stats, the stars,
and the milestones of a truly unforgettable year.
Welcome to the deep dive. If you're a hockey
fan, you know you probably already know the broad
strokes of late 1970s. You know the rival World
Hockey Association was looming, and you probably
know the New York Islanders were steadily brewing
something special out on Long Island. Right,
the foundations were shifting. Exactly. But today
we are sourcing our material directly from the
comprehensive historical record of one very specific
year, the 1978 -79 NHL season. And when you look
at this season in isolation, it's just the sheer
volume of tectonic shifts that happened in just
12 months is staggering. It really is a crucible
year. When you dig into the source material for
this season, It reads less like a standard sports
almanac and more like a case study of an industry
in transition. You have an organization that
is simultaneously peaking on the ice, facing
near collapse in the front office, and desperately
trying to reinvent its entire business model
all at the exact same time. It's that painful
friction between an old guard refusing to fade
quietly and a modern era demanding to take over.
Okay, let's unpack this. We have to start with
the Kings of the Mountain, which, of course,
are the Montreal Canadiens. If you want to understand
the landscape of this season, you really have
to look at the franchise that cast the longest
shadow. In the Stanley Cup Finals that year,
Montreal defeated the New York Rangers four games
to one, securing their fourth consecutive Stanley
Cup. And, you know, four in a row is a dynasty
by any definition. By any standard, yeah. But
what stands out in the source text isn't just
the victory itself. It's the specific historical
milestone this matchup represented. Right, because
this was an original six final. You had Montreal
and New York, two of the league's foundational
legacy franchises, going head -to -head for the
championship. And according to the records, it
was the very last time two original six teams
would meet in the finals for the next 34 years.
Wow. Right. It didn't happen again until the
Chicago Blackhawks and the Boston Bruins played
in 2013. And the context gets even deeper. With
the Boston Bruins making it to the semifinals
that year, the 1978 -79 season marked the last
time three Original Six teams made the Final
Four for 35 years. If we connect this to the
bigger picture, that 34 -year drought is an incredibly
telling statistic for you to think about. The
Original Six era built the entire foundation
of the sport for decades. And those legacy franchises
had an absolute stranglehold on the league's
culture, its play style, its success. They were
the establishment. Exactly. Seeing them dominate
the Final Four in 1979 was essentially their
final collective roar. The sheer length of the
drought that followed proves that this season
marked the definitive end of the old guard's
absolute dominance. The expansion teams that
had been added since 1967 were finally maturing.
The talent pool was spreading out and the power
dynamics of the entire sport were fundamentally
shifting. And the end of that era wasn't just
reflected in the team standings. It was starkly
visible in the individuals who defined the sport.
When you look at the retirement list for this
one specific season, it's actually quite sobering.
It really is a massive list. You lose Bobby Orr.
You lose Montreal's iconic goalie, Ken Dryden,
along with his legendary teammates, Yvon Cournoyer
and Jacques Lemaire. And you lose Bernie Parent.
from the Philadelphia Flyers. All of them hung
up their skates in the exact same year. It's
almost unprecedented to see so many foundational,
transformational figures exit the stage at once.
These weren't just great players. These were
the faces of their franchises. Bobby Orr didn't
just play defense. He completely revolutionized
the position, proving a defenseman could control
the entire offensive pace of the game. Changed
the geometry of the rink, really. Precisely.
And Ken Dryden and Bernie Parent were two of
the most dominant goaltenders to ever put on.
pads. Dryden walking away at age 31, right in
his prime, left a massive vacuum. It wasn't just
a few standard retirements. It was a mass exodus
that effectively closed a golden chapter in hockey
history. So you had these massive stars leaving
the ice, taking their star power and presumably
ticket sales with them. Yeah. And that lack of
guaranteed star power leads directly to the financial
panic we see happening off the ice. Yes. Here's
where it gets really interesting. Because while
the league was losing its biggest legends, the
league itself was literally shrinking. Facing
a massive financial crisis, the NHL approved
a desperate merger. A completely wild move by
today's standards. Unthinkable today. The financially
unstable Cleveland Barons merged with the Minnesota
North Stars. They kept the North Stars' name,
and they assumed the Barons' place in the Adams
division. I really want you to pause and think
about the historical weight of contraction. This
merger reduced the NHL membership down to 17
teams. This remains the absolute last time that
a league in the big four major professional sports
in North America contracted. It's crazy to think
about. In the modern multibillion -dollar sports
landscape, the valuation of teams makes contraction
unthinkable. Imagine waking up tomorrow and hearing
that a struggling NFL franchise or an NBA team
is just folding and merging with another team
to stay afloat. It's unfathomable today. But
in 1978, the business of professional hockey
was that fragile. Wait, I have to push back on
that slightly. If the league was in such a fragile
financial state that they literally had to contract
a franchise just to keep the lights on, how on
earth did they have the capital to negotiate
absorbing four brand new World Hockey Association
teams just a year later? The source explicitly
notes this contraction was happening under the
shadow of the WHA merger. That is an excellent
point, and it's the central paradox of this era.
It wasn't about having a surplus of capital to
expand. The WHA merger was essentially a desperate
peace treaty. For years, the NHL and the WHA
had been engaged in a ruthless bidding war for
talent, which was artificially inflating player
salaries and driving teams in both leagues toward
bankruptcy. So the NHL was shedding its dead
weight, the Cleveland Barons, to stabilize its
immediate cash flow. They contracted to 17 teams
temporarily to stop the bleeding. All is a calculated
retreat to prepare for absorbing the surviving
WHA teams and ending the ruinous salary war once
and for all. That makes perfect sense. It's crisis
management on a massive scale. And the logistical
mechanics of how they handled that contraction
are just wild to look back on. The dispersal
draft. Yes. In June of 1978, they held a dispersal
draft. The newly merged Minnesota North Stars
were allowed to protect exactly 14 players. Then
the five worst teams from the previous NHL season
got the option to pick one of the unprotected
players. It's such a bizarre mechanical solution
to a massive corporate merger. Very mechanical.
Imagine the modern equivalent, two major franchises
merging and the bottom five teams just getting
to pick over their unprotected rosters. It highlights
how experimental the front office had to be.
They were rewriting the rules of sports business
survival in real time. And that experimental
survival instinct wasn't just restricted to the
boardroom. It bled right onto the ice, bringing
a literal cold war into the arenas. late 70s,
geopolitical tensions are high and the NHL decides
to do something completely unprecedented with
its schedule. A huge pivot. For the first time
since it became an annual tradition, there was
no NHL All -Star game. They just scrapped the
midseason showcase entirely. Which is a massive
business decision. You are talking about willingly
sacrificing guaranteed revenue, television exposure
and decades of tradition to cancel your own midseason
showcase event. You need a highly compelling
reason. And their reason was the 1979 Challenge
Cup. Instead of having the NHL's best play against
each other, Soviet Union players traveled to
North America to play a grueling three -game
series against the absolute best players the
NHL had to offer. Right in the middle of the
season. Exactly. It was the ultimate us -versus
-them scenario. The best of the West against
the Soviet machine. And the result? The Soviets
won the series. Two games to one. This raises
an important question. What did that loss actually
mean for the identity of North American hockey?
Because for decades, there is a deeply ingrained,
almost arrogant assumption that the NHL was the
undisputed absolute pinnacle of the sport. Right.
The gold standard. The belief was that the best
players in the world were in the NHL, period.
But the Challenge Cup fundamentally shattered
that illusion. Because it wasn't just an exhibition
game. It was a three -game series, meaning both
sides had time to adjust and adapt to each other.
Exactly. It proved... on North American ice that
the Soviet system of extreme conditioning, precise
puck possession and team cohesion was a legitimate
and arguably superior threat to the traditional
North American dump and chase physical style.
It was a wake up call. A huge one. It forced
the NHL to confront the uncomfortable reality
that their style of play might be outdated. It
changed the global landscape of the sport because
it proved that to truly be the best league in
the world, the NHL was going to have to eventually
open its. doors and integrate international talent
and international strategies. And you can actually
see the beginnings of that stylistic shift happening
in the regular season that same year. We mentioned
earlier that Montreal won the cup, but I think
it's crucial to point out that they did not have
the best regular season record. No, they didn't.
The New York Islanders had been steadily building
an absolute powerhouse, and they actually beat
out the Canadians for the top spot in the league
by a single point. The Islanders finished with
116 points, while Montreal finished with 115.
That one -point difference might seem small,
but it's the physical manifestation of the torch
being passed. The Islanders were announcing that
the era of Montreal walking through the regular
season unopposed was over. I'd push back on that
slightly. The Islanders took the regular season,
sure, but Montreal still won the Cup in five
games. It wasn't a complete passing of the torch
just yet. It feels more like the Islanders were
knocking incredibly loudly on the door, but Montreal
was flat out refusing to open it. That's a very
fair distinction. Montreal still had the championship
pedigree and the playoff experience to lock it
down when it mattered most. But those regular
season points show that the statistical gap between
the old gar and the new blood was officially
closed. And the individual statistics from that
year back that up completely. You want to talk
about the new style of highly offensive hockey?
Let's look at Brian Trottier of the Islanders.
Oh, what a season he had. He swept the major
awards. He was the league's top scorer, winning
the Art Ross Trophy with a staggering 134 points.
That is 47 goals and 87 assists in an 80 -game
season. And naturally, he also took home the
Hart Memorial Trophy as the league's MVP. Trottier
was the engine of that Islanders team, and a
134 -point season is a clear indicator of the
high -octane, highly -skilled style of play that
was taking over the league. But the awards that
year also highlighted the diversity of talent
emerging across the continent. Definitely. You
had Montreal's Bob Ganey, who won the Conn Smythe
Trophy as the playoff MVP, and he also won the
Frank J. Selk Trophy as the league's best defensive
forward. That combination of awards tells you
exactly the kind of responsible, grinding hockey
Montreal relied on to win that final cup. The
ultimate two -way player. Right. And out on the
West Coast, you had Marcel Dion of the Los Angeles
Kings winning the Lester B. Pearson Award for
being the outstanding player in the regular season,
as voted by his peers. The talent was spreading
out geographically, and just as importantly,
it was getting younger. With all those legends
retiring, the rookies stepping onto the ice in
the 1978 -79 season were foundational to the
league's future. The Minnesota North Stars, fresh
off that messy merger and dispersal draft, held
the number one overall pick in the amateur draft.
They selected Bobby Smith. And he immediately
validated that pick by winning the Calder Memorial
Trophy as the top first year player. A great
pick. And he was an incredible company. The list
of debuts from the source material is basically
a who's who of the 1980s NHL. You have future
legendary coach Joel Quenneville debuting as
a player. You have Rod Langway starting his Hall
of Fame career. You have John Tonelli debuting
for the Islanders. And connecting back to the
looming WHA merger, you also started seeing major
crossover talent entering the NHL. Players like
Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson debuted for the
New York Rangers after beginning their major
professional careers in the WHA. Right. The talent
pool is just expanding rapidly. It was overflowing
with new blood, which forced the league to rethink
how they structured their postseason to accommodate
all this parity. The playoff structure they used
that year is a completely different animal than
what fans are used to today. The top two teams
in each of the four divisions made it, plus the
four next best regular season records acting
as wildcards. Right. But instead of a fixed bracket
where you can predict your path to the finals,
the NHL used a reseeding system. Reseeding is
fascinating because it prioritizes mathematical
fairness over logistical convenience. In every
single round, the highest remaining seed was
matched against the lowest remaining seed. Which
means if you are a lower seed that pulls off
an upset. You don't just take the spot of the
team you beat in a bracket. You get re -evaluated
and immediately fed to the top dog in the next
round. It's brutal. It ensured dynamic matchups,
but it made predicting the playoff picture incredibly
chaotic for the teams traveling and for the fans
watching. The division winners got a bye to the
quarterfinals, the preliminary round was a quick
best of three, and then everything else was a
grueling best of seven gauntlet. It was a gauntlet
designed to test exactly how deep these newly
structured teams really were. But for all this
incredible drama, the fall of the original six,
the influx of rookies, the geopolitical tension
of the Challenge Cup, there is a massive elephant
in the room regarding how people actually consumed
this product. Yes. So what does this all mean
for the fans watching at home? You would think
a season this packed with storylines, awards
and international drama would be an absolute
television goldmine. You would think so. Well,
the source text reveals a shockingly bleak reality
for U .S. television coverage during this era.
The CBS network televised exactly one single
game all season, just one. And it wasn't even
a regular season game or a playoff game. It was
game two of the Challenge Cup against the Soviets.
It is stunning to modern sensibilities to have
your entire national broadcast presence in the
United States whittled down to a single midseason
exhibition game shows how little faith traditional
networks had in the sport's mass appeal. And
the situation with the other major network was
arguably worse. ABC had an agreement to air game
seven of the Stanley Cup finals. But as we discussed,
Montreal beat the Rangers in five games. So the
finals never reached a game seven. Right. Which
means ABC aired absolutely zero NHL hockey that
entire year. Yeah. Between the two major American
networks, the American public got to watch exactly
one hockey game on national television. Wait,
why didn't ABC just pivot and air Game 5 when
they realized it was an elimination game and
the Cup was going to be awarded? That highlights
the fatal flaw of 1970s traditional network television.
The schedules were incredibly rigid. Broadcast
networks had daytime soaps, evening news, and
primetime sitcoms locked in months in advance.
They couldn't just preempt their highly profitable
scheduled programming on a few days' notice for
a hockey game. Wow. Because of those rigid contracts,
the NHL had no backup plan if a series ended
early. That is a brutal lesson in media distribution.
What's fascinating here is that this absolute
rock bottom moment in broadcasting was actually
the catalyst for the modern era of sports media.
This was the fourth and final season that NHL
games aired in national broadcast syndication
under what was known as the NHL network package.
Right. Because the major networks like CBS and
ABC were giving them virtually zero airtime.
And because the syndication model was failing
them, the league was forced to completely dissolve
that old strategy. They realized they couldn't
rely. the big three networks to dictate their
visibility anymore. So they pivoted. And according
to the source, they pivoted toward the future.
After this disastrous television season, the
league signed packages with fledgling cable networks.
They signed deals with UA Columbia, which would
later become the USA Network, and another tiny
startup called ESPN. That pivot is the turning
point for the entire business. By being completely
shut out of traditional broadcast television,
the NHL accidentally became a pioneer in the
explosive growth of cable sports broadcasting.
They got in on the ground floor. They hitched
their wagon to ESPN right at the very beginning
of the cable revolution, realizing that a dedicated
sports network would never bump an elimination
game for a sitcom. It's a perfect example of
a crisis forcing an innovation that ultimately
secures the long -term future of the business.
When you lay all the pieces of the puzzle out
like that, it's almost hard to believe all of
this happened in a single calendar year. In the
1978 -79 season alone, you have the Montreal
Canadiens securing their fourth straight cup,
which ends up being the last gasp of original
six dominance for over three decades. Yeah. You
have the retirement of absolute titans like Bobby
Orr and Ken Dryden. You have a desperate franchise
merger between Cleveland and Minnesota, marking
the last contraction in the Big Four sports.
You have the humbling reality check loss to the
Soviet Union in the Challenge Cup. And you have
the absolute scarcity of U .S. television coverage,
forcing the league to abandon syndication and
gamble on this brand new concept called cable
TV. It truly was a crucible year. It was painful,
it was messy, and it required the shedding of
a lot of old ways, old heroes, and old business
models. But it was absolutely necessary to make
room for the modern, global, highly televised
NHL that we recognize today. It's an incredible
story of survival and forced evolution. It is.
And it leaves me with a final thought that I'd
love for you to mull over. Think about a struggling
industry or a business that you interact with
today. Maybe it's a legacy media brand or a massive
tech company that feels like it's shrinking,
contracting its workforce, or failing to reach
its audience, much like the NHL, with its franchise
merger and its zero US TV coverage back in 1979.
We have a tendency to look at contraction, loss
of visibility, and the retirement of old leadership
as the definitive death rattle of an industry.
But what if, just like - Like hockey in 1979,
that industry isn't actually dying at all. What
if it is just executing one massive, painful
pivot away from its past to prepare for its own
next golden era? What a fantastic perspective
to leave us with. Thank you so much for joining
us on this deep dive into the 1978 -79 NHL season.
It's been a blast unpacking the history with
you. Until next time.