When The Kraken Were Just Fry

When the Seattle Kraken were awarded their franchise memorandum of understanding in 2019, it felt like the NHL finally reached a city that had a long history of hockey without the NHL's involvement. Of course, the Seattle Metropolitans did win the Stanley Cup in 1917, but that was still a time where any team could challenge the holder of a trophy to a contest. Instead, the city had long been a junior and minor hockey outpost until the Kraken were made official in 2020, but that may not have been the case had Vincent Abbey, president of the CHL's Seattle Totems, had his affairs in order back in 1975.

According to a report in the Winnipeg Free Press on Thursday, February 27, 1975, the Seattle hockey group led by Abbey officially bowed out of the running for an NHL expansion team in the city that was expected to play in the 1975-76 NHL season. Here's that report.

It seems like Seattle came oh-so-close to getting a team as the NHL's chairman of the expansion committee, William Jennings, sounded like he had given the green light to Seattle as long as the ownership group could meet the required criteria for expansion. They had been granted a conditional franchise in 1974 whereby they would be require to meet the criteria set out by the NHL. All these prospective owners of a Seattle NHL franchise had to do was meet those terms.

As per Jennings, the Totems group "would not be prepared in the near future to implement its previous offer to acquire an NHL team for the 1975-76 season." Unable to come up with the $1 million needed for the franchise, the Seattle NHL dream officially died in the NHL boardroom at the end of February in 1975, and we'd wait nearly fifty years before the NHL landed in Seattle as the Kraken officially.

Where this story takes a turn, however, is that Victoria's Daily Colonist offered a completely conflicting report one day later.

If you're keeping track of the score, the NHL said the Seattle offer was dead on Thursday, but Friday saw the Seattle ownership group preparing to "make a definite commitment" within a few weeks. Both accounts can't be true based on the statements given, so was Seattle's bid for a 1975 team on or off? And who should we believe?

Eleven days later, the waters got even muddier as NHL President Clarence Campbell made mention that the then-bankrupt Pittsburgh Penguins may move to Seattle for the 1975-76 season after addressing the financial situations of both the Penguins and the Golden Seals on March 11, 1975. The report in the Medicine Hat News is below.

If you skim by all the chatter about the Penguins and Seals, the Canadian Press noted that the NHL's expansion committee had been weighing options for the struggling franchises that were already part of the NHL. As we know from the February 27 article in the Winnipeg Free Press, the Denver group was already pushing for the Seals to relocate there, and that left Seattle, who had been awarded a conditional franchise, as an option if the Penguins were to relocate.

That still doesn't answer the question about Vincent Abbey or his ownership group that had been awarded a conditional franchise, though. Clearly, the NHL needed to provide some sort of answer as to what was happening with the Seattle expansion bid before it could move the Penguins if that was the solution to Pittsburgh's insolvency.

We'd finally get that answer from the NHL on March 12, 1975.

As per Al Colletti's report in the Winnipeg Free Press that day, Denver won the right to start an expansion franchise for the 1975-76 season with them being placed in the Adams Division alongside Boston, Toronto, Buffalo, and California. They were denied the option to purchase the Golden Seals, however, and were instead given an expansion franchise option for the sum of $6 million.

Unfortunately for Seattle, expansion would not happen with Campbell making it clear that the expansion franchise offer for 1975-76 was dead, but the conditional franchise offer for 1976-77 was still in play. However, NHL Vice-President Don Ruck told reporters that the Seattle 1975 option was dead as of ten days earlier with Campbell confirming that Abbey had never posted the required letter of credit. When asked if Abbey would assume the debt of the Pittsburgh Penguins in a relocation, Campbell said, "That's dead, absolutely dead. Unless Seattle comes up with a brand-new offer acceptable to the Pittsburgh parties, that so-called 'put' agreement is dead."

It was also revealed that the Pittsburgh Penguins had applied for a loan through the NHL and its governors, and that allowed them to remain in Pittsburgh at that time. With relocating the team to Seattle being off the table, the Penguins remained in Pittsburgh while the NHL decided what to do with their financial mess.

The Seals, facing their own financial chaos, were given a May 1, 1975 deadline by Campbell when it came to the future of the team in Oakland as he made it clear that the league will not run the franchise for another year and lose millions of dollars. If you're thinking that they could just move north up the coast to Seattle, the NHL made it clear there was no ownership group there as Abbey failed to produce the letter of credit and no other groups had materialized.

If you thought this story ends in 1975, we're not quite done.

Abbey sued the NHL in 1983 in a $9.8 million antitrust lawsuit that alleged the NHL caused the demise of the Seattle Totems franchise due to an inability to attract top talent with the WHA and NHL monopolizing that talent. He also alleged that the NHL never granted the Seattle NHL franchise through "a complex series of deceptions or inaction by the NHL". Being that I'm not a lawyer nor play one on TV, some of the allegations seem very unprovable by Abbey, but the US District Court in Seattle was in session on November 9.

24 days later, US District Court Judge Donald Vorhees dismissed the case after the conclusion of the plaintiffs' case, ruling the plaintiffs had failed to prove their case. This would be one of a number of lawsuits that Abbey had filed against the NHL since his failed expansion bid, and it would appear that the legal battles over Seattle would come to a conclusion sometime near the start of 1986.

What shouldn't be lost in all this legal maneuvering from 1981 onward is that for two weeks in 1975, the city of Seattle, Washington was one million dollars away from being an NHL city which may have prevented the Kraken from ever existing. Make all the jokes you want about rising from the deep, but the Kraken likely would have remained as mythical creatures in sailors' stories had a lawyer named Vince Abbey produced that letter of credit in February of 1975.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!