Blazers couldn’t spark fire they desired
No matter how hard they tried, Vancouver’s WHA franchise failed to capture hockey market’s attention
Like most of the stories involving the Vancouver Blazers, it’s hard to separate fact from fiction. So keep that in mind as we relate the following.
As the Blazers were circling the drain at the end of the 1974-75 season, a couple of their staffers were taking a pre-game walk through Pacific Coliseum when they saw some new faces behind the concession stands.
“What happened?” one of the Blazers’ employees said.
“Jimmy (that would be owner Jimmy Pattison) brought in some volunteers from his church.”
The pair continued their stroll when they heard the organist strike up a chorus of Just A Closer Walk With Thee.
“He hired the organist from the church, too,” explained the second guy.
Another tale, however, is certifiably true.
Pat Price, the rookie defenceman who was going to transform the Blazers, got off to a slow start his rookie year, largely because he sprained his ankle falling off his platform shoes.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Price related to your agent for his book on the WHA, The Rebel League.
Which sums up the history of the Blazers neatly and succinctly.
This series is about the 50-year history of the Vancouver Canucks and the Blazers play only a tangential role in the Canucks’ story. They lasted all of two seasons and, if not for some of the more colourful characters they spawned, the Blazers would be consigned to the dustbin of history.
But, while they lasted only two years, the Blazers came along at a significant moment in the Canucks’ early years; a time when Pattison and his operatives believed the Vancouver market was theirs for the taking. And, who knows, had they signed Phil Esposito, had Pat Price and Ron Chipperfield become stars, had Gary Smith not carried the Canucks to their first playoff appearance in 1975, maybe this story has a different ending.
“We had some fun,” says Pattison from his Vancouver office. (Dude is 91 and still returns calls.) “The owners in that league, they were an interesting group. You could write a book about them.”
Good idea. I’ll keep it in mind.
The Blazers began their short, tortured life as the Philadelphia Blazers in the WHA’s first year, a team which famously signed Derek Sanderson to one of the biggest contracts in hockey history, then got eight games out of him. Actually, the Blazers were the descendants of the Miami Screaming Eagles — but we have neither the time nor space to explain that one.
With Philly Blazers owners Jim Cooper and Bobby Brown looking for an exit ramp, Pattison — then as now, one of the wealthiest men in Canada — was recruited to the rebel league by Ben Hatskin, the Winnipeg Jets owner, and Billy Hunter, who operated the Oilers franchise in Edmonton.
In those early years, the WHA made a big splash by signing Bobby Hull in Winnipeg and Gordie Howe and his sons, Mark and Marty, in Houston. Hatskin and Hunter convinced Pattison that, with a modest investment, he could take on the Canucks, who’d struggled mightily in their first three years of existence.
That, at least, was the pitch. Things didn’t quite work out that way.
The Blazers tried mightily to draw an audience in Vancouver but their first year was largely a disaster and the second wasn’t much better. The star power in Year 1, such as it was, was provided by former Bruins winger Johnny McKenzie and their head coach, Hallof-Famer Andy Bathgate.
Bryan Campbell, a centre who had some decent years in Chicago, and Danny Lawson, who scored 50 goals in the Blazers’ first season in Vancouver, were the team’s best players. The most interesting might have been 20-year-old rookie defenceman Colin Campbell, who would become the NHL’s executive vice-president.
But whatever the Blazers had, it wasn’t enough. They finished 27-50-1 and 18 points out of a playoff spot.
Still, they tried.
The Blazers’ singular marketing plan was built around the concept of fire. Employees wore plastic fire helmets. Their cheerleaders, the Blazer
Belles, wore, what else, hot pants. Bonfires were lit inside and outside the rink and a fire-engine siren was sounded when the Blazers scored.
The player of the game was also presented with a fireman’s helmet. One night, Mike Walton of the Minnesota Fighting Saints won the coveted award then went out and celebrated his big night. In the early hours, an over-served Walton pulled the fire alarm at the team hotel and greeted firefighters wearing his fire helmet.
Did we mention it was a different time?
Things got considerably more interesting in Year 2 for the Blazers. Unfortunately, they didn’t get much better on the ice. Pattison made a huge splash when he signed Price, the presumptive first overall pick in the 1975 NHL draft, and Ron Chipperfield, a 20-year-old centre who rang up 162 points with the Brandon Wheat Kings.
Price was the big catch. At 19, he recorded 95 points with the Saskatoon Blazers while drawing comparisons to Bobby Orr. Longtime hockey man Dave Lewis, Price’s teammate in Saskatoon, calls him the best junior he has ever seen. Pattison would make Price a very wealthy young man, signing him to a groundbreaking five-year, $1.3-million contract with a $250,000 signing bonus at the 1974 Memorial Cup in Calgary.
“I didn’t want to move but Vancouver was the only place I’d play,” Price says. “I walked out of there with a certified cheque for $250,000. How does anyone relate to that? I was 19 and I had a quarter of a million dollars. I wanted to take everyone out to dinner but there was no place to cash the cheque.”
Price would put up 34 points in his rookie year with the Blazers, decent numbers for a 19-year-old defenceman but hardly the stuff of the next Bobby Orr. His contract, meanwhile, didn’t endear him to his teammates and he clashed with head coach Joe Crozier. During that season, Price kept in touch with Lewis and Bob Bourne, his junior teammates now with the New York Islanders, who did some unofficial recruiting for the NHL team.
That summer, the Isles took Price 11th overall in the NHL draft. Arrangements were made with the Blazers, who were happy to get out from under his contract, and Vancouver was soon in his rearview mirror.
“It was hell,” Price said of his year with the Blazers. “I was partly to blame but it was just a bad fit.”
Following the 1974-75 season, Pattison made one lastditch effort to capture the Vancouver market when he offered Esposito a six-year, $3.4 million deal with a million up front. Esposito, who’d averaged 60 goals a season over the previous seven campaigns with the Bruins, travelled to Vancouver with his then-wife Donna, and was close to signing with the Blazers before he re-upped with Boston.
“Stupidest thing I ever did,” Esposito says from Tampa, where he’s the Lightning’s radio colour man.
Esposito returned to Boston, huddled with Bruins GM Harry Sinden and eventually signed a new multi-year deal with the Bruins. A no-trade clause was discussed but Esposito was assured by Sinden he’d be a Bruin as long as he was the GM.
A month into the season,
Esposito was traded to the Rangers with Carol Vadnais for Brad Park, Jean Ratelle and, lest we forget, Joe Zanussi in one of the biggest deals in NHL history.
“It wasn’t Harry who made that trade,” Esposito says “It was (Bruins owner) Jeremy Jacobs.”
“Jimmy was offering a lot of money,” Esposito continued, referring to Pattison. “He was a great guy, the reason I would have signed in Vancouver.
“But I didn’t want to leave Boston. My wife was from there. The kids were born there. I could have signed the deal and been back in Boston in a year with a million bucks in my pocket but I wanted the NHL,”
The Blazers, for their part, would relocate to Calgary later that summer where they spent two seasons as the Cowboys before they expired prior to the 1977-78 season. That also represented Pattison’s last foray into the world of professional hockey.
In subsequent years, Pattison was asked about buying the Canucks and he would reference his experience with the Blazers as the reason he wasn’t interested.
“I had to decide if I was going to be a businessman or own a sports team,” he now says. “It’s an all-consuming business. People will stop you in the street and ask what you’re doing. I found that out.”
That and a whole lot more.
It was hell. I was partly to blame but it was just a bad fit.
Defenceman Pat Price