A REGAL AFFAIR, Part 1: Pro version of WHL was a great league

Seventy years ago, professional hockey was the hottest ticket in Brandon.

The Brandon Regals spent a season and a half in the old Western Hockey League in a mostly forgotten tale of a last-place squad that won a championship a year later and was then unceremoniously pulled from the city by an owner with ambitions of one day owning a National Hockey League club.

Over 10 editions, The Brandon Sun will use contemporary sources to take a detailed look back at the WHL, the conditions that brought the Regals to the Wheat City in 1955, their players, their games and why they left.

It won’t be a blow-by-blow account of the games, but instead a look at the things that made the Regals and the era they played in so fascinating.

The sources include stories in a handful of newspapers, including The Brandon Sun, Winnipeg Free Press, Winnipeg Tribune, Regina Leader-Post, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Online research was supplemented by the page-by-page examination of 18 months of microfiche of 1956 and 1957 editions of The Brandon Sun.

Additional research in finding reaction from other markets and in the onerous task of rebuilding two years of Regals schedules was provided by former Sun staffer Lucas Punkari.

Also, the definitive source on the old WHL is a terrific book called Ice Warriors: The Pacific Coast/Western Hockey League 1948-1974, which was written by University of Alberta professor emeritus Jon C. Stott and released in 2008.

ANOTHER ERA

The old pro Western Hockey League was once one of the top three loops in the world, and for 18 months, this small league with big dreams found itself in Brandon, playing out of the old Wheat City Arena.

The league existed from 1952 to 1974, with 24 different teams playing at least a season on the western side of the continent.

It started with a heavy western Canadian component and more than two decades later collapsed in the United States as dreams of being incorporated into the NHL failed to take shape.

To provide some kind of context, it’s worth looking back at the professional hockey ranks in the 1950s.

The top league, of course, was the National Hockey League and the hallowed Original Six, the Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, Boston Bruins, New York Rangers, Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings. All the teams were based in the east, with about 120 jobs available at the top level.

That’s the way it was from 1942 until expansion in 1967.

One level lower was the American Hockey League, which started in 1936 and was also based entirely in the eastern United States. In the mid-1950s, it had six squads.

The United States Hockey League (1945-51 and 1961-79) was the other important league, although the International Hockey League (1945-2001) and Central Hockey League (1952–1953) were also operating.

The WHL’s roots can be traced to a time when the 10 teams in the amateur Pacific Coast Hockey League (PCHL) — all of which operated out of British Columbia and the western United States — met to form a pro league. They had already been paying players under the table, so they formally established a new pro PCHL in 1948.

That allowed them to establish working relationships with the three leagues above them, the NHL, the AHL and the USHL, and potentially have players sent to them.

In the 1948-49 season, there were just 29 pro teams outside the NHL, with 11 in the AHL, 10 in the PCHL and eight in the USHL. That meant there were plenty of players to share. (For comparison’s sake, there are 94 teams in the NHL, AHL and ECHL now, and roughly 750 jobs in the NHL.)

After competing with a high of 11 teams in 1949-50, PCHL clubs began to fall away, and in 1951, it absorbed three teams from the Western Canada Senior Hockey League, which had played out of Saskatchewan and Alberta for six seasons.

After one year under the PCHL banner, the growing entity was renamed the Western Hockey League for the 1952-53 season. In that inaugural season, the league had the Calgary Stampeders, Edmonton Flyers, New Westminster Royals, Saskatoon Quakers, Seattle Bombers, Tacoma Rockets, Vancouver Canucks and Victoria Cougars.

All eight teams played in rinks with capacities between 3,500 and 6,475.

The WHL lost one of its franchises for two years in a row, but in 1955-56, added three new teams, including the Regina Regals.

Financially, the salaries were never massive, with an average of less than $4,000 per season in 1948 and a high of under $14,000 in 1974, according to Stott’s book.

In all, 1,581 players suited up in the PCHL/WHL, including older players who were winding down their careers and youngsters on the way up.

So why does it matter?

Stott did a lovely job of explaining the reason in his book.

“At first it was the lowest tier in professional hockey — the destination of players too small or not good enough to play in the United States Hockey League. Then, with the disbanding of the USHL, and the decision of three NHL teams to establish their top farm teams in the west, the calibre of play improved greatly.

“Players who’d skated in both leagues in the earlier 1950s rated the American Hockey League, which had older, more experienced players who could quickly be called up to the National Hockey League, a notch above the WHL. By the later 1950s and 1960s, some who had played in both the NHL and WHL felt that such championship WHL teams as the Portland Buckaroos, San Francisco Seals and Seattle Totems were as good as the weaker NHL teams.”

» This is the first instalment in a 10-part series chronicling the unlikely story of Brandon’s only professional hockey team, their mid-season move to the city, their brief stay and why the Regals eventually left after the 1956-57 season. Tomorrow, the Regals consider a move from Regina to Brandon.

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

INDEX

1. July 28 — WHL’s origins.

2. July 29 — Considering Brandon.

3. July 30 — Relocation, 1955-56 season.

4. July 31 — 1956-57 training camp.

5. Aug. 1 — 1956-57 season.

6. Aug. 4 — The players.

7. Aug. 5 — 1957 playoffs.

8. Aug. 6 — Edinburgh Cup.

9. Aug. 7 — The Regals leave.

10. Aug. 8 — The aftermath.