The Six: The NHL's Old Guard

For the casual fan of hockey, there is not much pageantry, or fanciful ceremony that happens between teams. Goals, hits, points, and penalties are the only real pieces of ceremony that they see. Despite this, the true fans of the game; who go early to see shoot-around, read all the magazines about stats and scores, who stay up late to watch the west coast games, they see the ceremony, and it doesn’t get any better than an Original Six matchup.

The Original Six, the first six teams to make up the NHL: The Toronto Maple Leafs, The Canadiens de Montreal, The Boston Bruins, The New York Rangers, the Chicago Blackhawks, and the Detroit Red Wings. These six teams, formed at times during the first NHL, between 1909 and 1926, and lasted until the 1967 expansion, are the quintessential clubs in hockey. Between them, they have won 64 Stanley Cup Championships, an astounding number, and it continues to grow each year with all but one making the Playoffs consistently for the past few decades. (Sorry Leafs fans) While the accomplishments pile up, and a list of awards, trophies, and records would take more than 20 pages, times have not always been good for the six.

Americans love hockey, it’s a hard hitting, exciting sport that many people not only have easy access to, but is also easily understood and enjoyed. On the other hand, our Canadian cousins to the north, live hockey. There are other sports in Canada, and the professional programs there are among the world’s elite national sport leagues (the CFL), but hockey, is the lifeblood of the country. At times, fans, players, and coaches would see this as an unfair advantage, and that the Canadian teams, the Canadiens and the Maple Leafs, had more sway over what happened in games, which players got to skate for which team, and even who made the playoffs each year. The corruption within the early days of the NHL was rampant, and the players suffered the most for it. Skaters were treated very poorly, and were not allotted basic work benefits. If you got on the bad side of the team’s owner or stakeholder, you would get sent down to the minors, or traded to a last place team. If you got injured, the team would only pay medical expenses up to two months after the injury occurred. Players like Ted Lindsay, a forward for the Red Wings, advocated for a player’s union, to get better benefits and have costs covered, but were shut down by team owners, and sent to the minors, or traded to poor teams. James E. Norris, a primary stakeholder in the Blackhawks, also owned the Red Wings, and was basically in charge of the Bruins through mortgage loan extensions at one point in time during the era. Norris was one of the worst offenders when it came to team corruption, and was constantly criticized for stacking his teams for more favorable matchups. Journalists and critics at the time joked that the NHL no longer stood for the National Hockey League, but rather the “Norris House League”, due to Norris’s supposed absolute control over half of the teams playing.

The Original Six era was dominated by three teams, two Canadian, and one American. The Maple Leafs, the Canadiens, and the Red Wings. Due to an unfair playoff system, only two teams were eliminated in the regular season for playoff contention, which made it difficult for other teams to make breakthroughs, since the Leafs, the Canadiens, and the Red Wings missed the playoffs a combined 8 times during the era. With greater amounts of talent around them, the three teams were an imposing force during the era, and had a better chance of winning the cup, than the other three teams combined. To give a better perspective, the Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 1941 and 1970, other than Chicago winning the cup in 1961, every Stanley Cup was won by either the Leafs, the Canadiens, and the Red Wings between those two dates.

In the early 1960’s, more and more teams were bought and owned by younger owners, causing a more intense want and need for expansion. With their cable contract with CBS expired, and increased pressure from the Western Hockey League to become nationally recognized, the NHL decided to expand, and added six teams to the NHL. In the first decade of the Expansion Era, the Original Six still dominated the NHL, due in part of their increased talent pools and reputation. As additional teams were added, the dominance and control over the NHL of the six began to fade. Teams like the Broad Street Bullies of Philadelphia hoisted the cup in the 1974-75 season and the 1979 Cup finals saw the last all Original Six series until 2013, when the Blackhawks beat the Bruins for Lord Stanley’s trophy. The parity between teams was becoming non existent, and the era of the Six was over.

In the modern game, the dominance is reversed. While the Red Wings have made the playoffs for 24 straight seasons, their last cup win was during the 2007-2008 season. The Canadiens are in a serious drought, having not hoisted the cup since the 1992-1993 season, and the Maple Leafs are even worse off, having failed to hold Lord Stanley’s Cup since the 1966-1967 season, the worst dearth in the sport. The Blackhawks, Rangers, and Bruins on the other hand, have been some of the top teams in the league. Since 2010, all but one Final included either the Bruins, Rangers, or the Blackhawks, with the Blackhawks winning three cups, and the Bruins one. With this reversal, the sport has changed drastically in the past decade, and the NHL has benefitted from it. Yes, there is still dominance for some teams, but each year, teams that have struggled in the past in the Eastern Conference have made the playoffs, and made deep runs. The game is more exciting and unpredictable, you never know what might happen, and no game is a sure win for any team.

As fans, we owe a lot to the Original Six era. While there were a lot of problems with owners, issues with players, and overly stacked teams, the era paved the way for the modern league. It gave fans, players, and coaches, the backbone of the sport, a look at what a real national league could be. It laid the foundation for the NHL as we know it, an incredibly competitive, lively, fast, and exciting game that captivates millions. It helped cities, towns, and villages all over the world produce five star talent, and gave us some of the greatest players the sport has ever seen. We owe a lot to the Six, they ushered in the era of true hockey, and as fans, we should respect that, but that doesn’t mean we need to nice when the puck drops.

Cheers and as always, keep you stick on the ice.