The View From Wisconsin

They were sick of it.

Some of the greatest men in hockey were losing money over the game they loved.

The War was in full swing, and they'd lost a ton of money because one of their teams had been shipped, en masse, to the front lines.

On top of that, there was this twerp of an owner who was getting sue-happy - mostly because none of the rest of the owners cared for him much.

The problem was, he had all the good, young talent on his team - talent that was becoming harder and harder to find in the East.

Oh, sure, they could have looked to the West to try and find new talent, but the costs associated with such a venture were growing larger every day.

In fact, most of the gentlemen that came into that hotel room in Montreal that day wouldn't have been surprised to hear that the Western circuit would be defunct within a decade.

They had their own problem, though - their league was already defunct.

A few weeks earlier, because their fellow owner had demanded his share of the insurance settlement over the team that pulled out mid-season that Feburary, the rest of them had voted to suspend operations of their little hockey venture.

Now, with the ponds freezing up and the rivers freezing over, the time for hockey was fast approaching once again.

And these guys wanted their livelihood back.

So, they sat down and essentially re-formed their league.

They decided to call it that - a "league", instead of an "association" - to differentiate it from that of their predecessor.

The primary reason for this, of course, being to ward off any legal problems that may arise because of their renegade owner.

(The court system wasn't what it is today, of course.)

It was settled: Frank would be the league president.

Two teams would represent Montreal.

The newspaper-man from Ottawa would ice his squad, hoping to return it to glory with the star player he "stole" from that renegade owner.

The gentleman from Quebec demurred over icing a team, mostly because a friend of that same owner owned the arena.

Until they could straighten out things, they couldn't risk having legal battles keep them from playing.

Frank realized they couldn't play with only three teams, so he convinced the gentleman who owned and operated the arena which their former co-hort iced his team to take over an "expansion franchise" for the city.

Toronto was now in the fold.

Now, all they needed to do was set things down to paper.

This they did, and with a few strokes of the pen, it was completed.

The National Hockey League was born, on this date, back in 1917.

She's been on life support at times, and even went into that long coma this past year, but she's still strong.

And, with two young kids - one from Quebec, one from the frozen rivers of Russia - playing in a marquee matchup tonight, you can't say that the "league" those gentlemen formed 98 years ago is doing that bad.