Before the Penguins, there were the Pittsburgh Pirates. Pennsylvania’s first NHL team entered the league on this date in 1925 and left it exactly six years later
September 26 is a monumental day in the history of the first NHL team to call Pittsburgh and Philadelphia home.
The Pittsburgh Pirates were awarded a franchise and entered the league on this date in 1925. A cross-state move and a name change later, the Philadelphia Quakers exited the league on the same date in 1931.
Pittsburgh had come into the NHL with high hopes after its local club, the Yellow Jackets, won two consecutive United States Amateur Hockey Association championships in 1923-24 and 1924-25. The Yellow Jackets formed the nucleus of the pro team, which was dubbed the Pirates and even adopted the amateur club’s black and yellow color scheme for its jerseys. The colors actually represented the city of Pittsburgh itself; interestingly, although the NHL team took its name from the established National League baseball franchise, those Pirates didn’t adopt black and gold for their own uniforms until the late 1940s.
The hockey Pirates performed well in their first season, finishing third out of seven teams with a 19-16-1 record. They qualified for the semifinal playoff round, a two-game, total-goals affair against the second-place Montreal Maroons. The series opened at Duquesne Gardens in Pittsburgh, but the home team fell 3-1 to the visitors. The Pirates fought back for a 3-3 tie in the second game, in the Montreal Forum, but this allowed the Maroons to win the round 6-4 on aggregate goals.
Nearly the same thing happened in 1927-28, when the Pirates finished third in the American Division and made the playoffs for the second and last time. This time they drew the New York Rangers in the first round, but again they lost six goals to four.
After five seasons in the Steel City, the Pirates were struggling. They migrated across Pennsylvania in 1930, settling in Philadelphia and becoming the Quakers. Unfortunately, they were worse than ever in their one and only season in the City of Brotherly Love, compiling a 5-36-3 record and finishing dead last.
The league announced on this date in 1931 that the Quakers and the Ottawa Senators were suspending their franchises for a year, with their players to be dispersed throughout the league. If the teams came back to play, their players would be returned to them. Ottawa did come back, briefly, but the Quakers never did. Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, would remain out of the NHL until the 1967 expansion that created the Flyers and the Penguins.
But the hockey Pirates did leave a positive legacy behind. In January 1980, the Penguins, who had worn double-blue and white jerseys since their inception, announced that they would change their color scheme to black and gold, matching the baseball Pirates and the NFL’s Steelers. The Boston Bruins protested, claiming that this move would infringe on their own identity, but NHL president John Ziegler rejected their protest due to the hockey Pirates having worn the colors first.
Also on this date in hockey history:
1925 – The New York Americans joined the NHL along with the Pittsburgh Pirates. They stocked their roster with members of the Hamilton Tigers, who had been suspended by the NHL for refusing to participate in the Stanley Cup playoffs earlier the same year. The Hamilton ownership retained its franchise for the time being, with the expectation that the Tigers would return anew to compete alongside the Americans, but the league’s annual meeting in November confirmed that the franchise had been taken over by the league and rendered inactive.
1958 – One of the most animated careers in NHL history began as Eddie Shack, “The Entertainer,” signed his first contract with the New York Rangers. The feisty and fun-loving 21-year-old prospect, who had spent the 1957-58 season playing with Providence in the AHL, had been told he would not be allowed to play for the Rangers in their pre-season exhibition game the following night against the Toronto Maple Leafs if he did not sign a contract. He did sign and then registered a goal and an assist as the Rangers beat the Leafs 4-1 at the Stamford Memorial Arena in Stamford, Ont., now part of Niagara Falls. Shack would later play nine seasons with the Leafs in two separate stints, winning four Stanley Cups, and scoring the Cup-winning goal in 1963.
1972 – Paul Henderson scored his second winning goal in as many games as Team Canada defeated the Soviet Union 4-3 in Game 7 of the Summit Series. With just over two minutes left in the third period, Henderson took a clearing pass in the neutral zone from teammate Serge Savard and, despite being surrounded by four Soviet players, got in alone on goalie Vladislav Tretiak and beat him with a quick shot as he was being knocked to the ice. Henderson’s goal tied the series 3-3-1 and set the stage for the decisive Game 8 two nights later in Moscow.
1995 – The Bruins said farewell to their longtime home, Boston Garden, after 67 years. The Bruins played host to their historic rivals, the Montreal Canadiens, one last time in a pre-season exhibition game. The Canadiens had also been Boston’s opponent in the first hockey game at the Garden, in November 1928. Following the game, Bruins franchise icons gathered on the ice, many of them taking the opportunity to skate on the frozen surface one last time. The honor of the last lap went to Bobby Orr, but the most poignant moment of the evening occurred when Normand Leveille, whose brief career had ended at age 19 after he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage during a 1982 game, skated a lap, assisted by former teammates Raymond Bourque and Terry O’Reilly. “Talk about heart,” Orr said, according to Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy. “Normand has heart. To me, that was the highlight of the night.” The Garden sat empty for nearly three years until it was demolished in the spring of 1998.
2021 – The NHL’s 32nd franchise, the Seattle Kraken, made their pre-season debut in Spokane, Wash., and won their first game with a 5-3 decision over the Vancouver Canucks. Riley Sheahan scored the team’s first goal after Vancouver jumped out to a quick 2-0 lead. Morgan Geekie had two goals for the Kraken while Jared McCann and Ryan Donato also scored.