Oakland Seals, Part Two

Big Al sends this Oakland table hockey player.

I've been reading up on the NHL's 1967 expansion, the one that doubled the league's size from six to twelve teams and brought Oakland into the fold. I'd grown up thinking of it as a sort of 1960s megaproject, like Expo 67 or one of Henri Bourassa's hydro dams, a grand gesture of modernity.  In fact it was a countermove against the Western Hockey League, which was threatening to graduate to major league status and claim the whole west coast as its turf.   The WHL featured a team called the San Francisco Seals and another called the Vancouver Canucks.  (It would be interesting to see how much continuity there was between the WHL and NHL ownerships.)  Driven out of its Bay Area, LA and, later, Vancouver markets, the WHL moved into new areas, but when the Denver Spurs and Phoenix Roadrunners absconded to the World Hockey Association the writing was on the wall and the league folded.  The NHL has always made a point of requiring other leagues to do their player development for them and, it would seem, to develop new markets for them as well.  But the NHL's growth (especially under Campbell) has usually been a reactive measure.  If the NHL is ever to have a European division it appears somebody else will have to try it and succeed at it first.

Comments

[Alan]

Note that the "O" is actually a "C" as, I understand, during the summer of '67 there were plans to call the team the California Seals, a forecast. Way cool seal diagram, by the way. Likely the coolest sports logo ever - a cross of Modrian and Modigliani...and a seal.

[Alan]

Here is further evidence:

http://www.gasolinealleyantiques.com/sports/images/hockeypuck/puck-oaklandrawlings1.JPG