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The National Hockey League (NHL) undertook a major expansion for the 1967–68 season. Six new franchises were added to double the size of the league, making this expansion the largest (in terms of the number of teams created) ever undertaken at one time by an established major sports league. The expansion marked the first change in the composition of the league since 1942, when the Brooklyn Americans folded, thereby ending the era of the Original Six. The six new teams were the California Seals, Los Angeles Kings, Minnesota North Stars, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and the St. Louis Blues. This expansion, including placing two new clubs on the West Coast, was the result of the league's fears of a rival league that would challenge the NHL for players and the Stanley Cup. In addition, the league hoped that the expansion would result in a lucrative TV contract in the United States. == Background == For many years after the shakeout caused by the Depression and World War II, the NHL owners staunchly resisted applications to expand beyond the so-called "Original Six" clubs (Boston, Montreal, Toronto, New York, Detroit and Chicago). Groups representing Philadelphia (which had secured rights to the dormant Montreal Maroons franchise), Los Angeles and the AHL Cleveland Barons were each in turn given conflicting requirements that seemed to contemporary observers designed to disqualify the bids, and it was widely understood that the existing NHL owners wanted no encroachments upon their profits.〔 The NHL had been an early leader in television broadcasting, both in Canada and the U.S. However, by 1960, its TV contracts had expired, and the league had none until 1963.〔 The owners saw that the televising of other sports had enhanced the images of those leagues' players, and feared that this would provide leverage at salary time. Already, players were starting to get legal help in negotiating contracts.〔 Additionally, the league did not want to change game start times to suit the networks.〔 In 1965, the NHL was told that it would not receive a U.S. television contract without expansion, and that the networks were considering televising games from the Western Hockey League, an ostensibly minor league that had, by that time, expanded into several large West Coast markets and accumulated strong rosters of players excluded from the static NHL lineups of the era. Because of this, and a generally favorable environment for alternative sports leagues (the American Football League had become a rousing success around the same time, while the abortive Continental League nonetheless had a role in the expansion of baseball), the NHL's control over major professional hockey was legitimately threatened. Fears of the WHL becoming a rival major league, and the desire for a lucrative TV contract in the U.S. much like the ones Major League Baseball and the National Football League had secured, wore down the opposition; moreover, as more conservative owners retired, a younger guard more receptive to expansion, such as Stafford Smythe in Toronto, David Molson in Montreal, and William M. Jennings in New York, took power.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「1967 NHL expansion」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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