Florida Expansion In 1976?

In 1976, the city of Tampa added its first professional sports team as the NFL granted an expansion franchise to Hugh Culverhouse, a tax attorney from Jacksonville, after a deal to bring the NFL under Tom McCloskey, a Philadelphia builder, failed. Of course, Tampa Bay now has the NFL, MLB, and the NHL with the arrival of the Lightning, but would it surprise you to know that Tampa Bay was on the NHL's radar as far back as 1975? This won't be a long story as we know that it took a while for the NHL to land in Florida, but there was interest in bringing the NHL to the area nearly 50 years ago!

There are very few reports, it seems, on the internet about former Detroit Red Wings owner Bruce Norris's idea to expand into Florida, but it was reported in the Winnipeg Free Press on February 17, 1975.

If Norris had sold the Red Wings to the group headed by Lindsay and Pavelich, it seems he was seriously looking at either Tampa or Florida as a potential expansion location with the money he'd make off the sale of the Red Wings. I can say that none of this went very far as Norris would eventually sell the Detroit Red Wings franchise to Mike Ilitch in June of 1982 so this mid-1970s expansion chatter was a lot of hot air, but it looks like the NHL was following the NFL's lead in putting a professional team in one of the markets in Florida.

Of course, Norris denied the sale of Red Wings to the Lindsay-Pavelich group which made the expansion plans moot, but Bruce Norris's relationship with Ted Lindsay was all sorts of weird. You may remember that Norris traded Ted Lindsay from the Red Wings to Chicago because of Lindsay's efforts to unionize the players in 1957, yet Norris hired Lindsay to be the Red Wings' general manager in 1977. In 1980, Lindsay was fired by Norris, and Lindsay's response was a $20 million lawsuit for alleged fraud and misrepresentation. Clearly, these two had an interesting work dynamic in their careers.

Again, there's very little about the NHL pushing for expansion in the state of Florida in the 1970s, but we do know the AHL was approached about putting a franchise there and the WHA tried to set up shop in Miami in 1972 with the Screaming Eagles only to move that franchise to Philadelphia as the Blazers before playing a single game. Twenty years later, the Tampa Bay Lightning would finally put a stake in Florida for the NHL, but a Bruce Norris-led expansion team in Florida in the 1970s seems like a lot of malarky.

Based on how he ran the Red Wings, I'm not sure that any Florida-based team would have been successful under his watch. It's pretty telling that the Red Wings began winning Stanley Cups after Norris sold his stake in the team, so one would think that he would have taken the money and retired. Bruce Norris likely wouldn't have seen his expansion team reach the current heights of the two Florida franchises, though, as Norris passed away in 1986 from liver failure.

Hockey in Florida? Seems it was a thing back in 1975.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!