The NHL admitted Chicago and Detroit on this date in 1926, increasing the size of the nine-year-old league to 10 clubs
At the end of the 1923-24 season, the NHL was comprised of the same four clubs it had begun the 1920-21 campaign with – the Hamilton Tigers, the Montreal Canadiens, the Ottawa Senators, and the Toronto St. Patricks.
A little more than two years later, though, the thriving loop had grown to 10 teams. The two newest teams, based in Chicago and Detroit, officially joined on this date in 1926.
Representatives from the two organizations were invited to the NHL’s annual meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Montreal – where the league itself had been founded nine years earlier – and learned they had received unanimous approval from the established eight franchises.
“The Chicago club will play in the Coliseum, which has a capacity of seven thousand,” read a report in the Sept. 27, 1926 edition of the Montreal Daily Star, “while the Detroiters will play at Windsor until their arena, which will be a fine structure, is completed some time early in the winter.”
Chicago’s franchise was named the Black Hawks – they’ve officially been the Blackhawks since 1986 – and was stocked with players from the Portland Rosebuds of the defunct Western Hockey League. Likewise, the Detroit team was comprised of members of the WHL’s Victoria Cougars. Fittingly, Detroit kept the Cougars name, changing to the Falcons in 1930 and the Red Wings in 1932.
The entry of Chicago and Detroit, and that of the New York Rangers, who had been granted a franchise several months earlier, precipitated the transformation of the NHL into a two-division league effective immediately. The three new teams joined the Boston Bruins and the Pittsburgh Pirates in the American Division, while the New York Americans were grouped in the Canadian (or International) Division with the Canadiens, the Senators, the St. Patricks, and the Montreal Maroons.
The league’s first expansion had brought Boston and the Maroons into the fold in 1924. The following year, the Americans bought the contracts of the Hamilton Tigers’ players, effectively replacing that franchise, and came into the league along with the Pirates. That, along with the collapse of the WHL and the freeing up of its players, set the stage for the NHL to add three new teams for the 1926-27 season.
Although further expansion was discussed in the newspapers and probably even considered at some high levels, the start of the Great Depression in 1929 ended such talk and marked the end of the NHL’s first era of growth. By 1935, the league’s membership had been whittled to eight teams. The collapse of the Maroons in 1938 and the Americans in 1942 left the six clubs that have long been known, erroneously, as the Original Six.
The league would not grow again until 1967, when it doubled in size by adding six new teams. That was followed by another expansion frenzy that saw six more clubs admitted in increments between 1970 and 1974.
The NHL now has 32 franchises, with much talk recently about potential future growth that, if it happens soon, would see it become the largest pro sports league in North America.