alternatehistory.com

Yesterday evening I was touring the Toronto Christmas Market in the Distillery District just to the east of the downtown when I came across The Sport Gallery. There, I came across a $C 71 sweater emblazoned with the logos of the Original Six teams: the Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, New York Rangers, Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, and the Boston Bruins.



I did not buy the sweater. I did start imagining possibilities for an alternate NHL. What if the NHL never expanded much beyond the Original Six? Some expansion was inevitable, given the pent-up demand for the professional game across hockey-playing territories throughout northern North America was suppressed only by the declining old guard of the NHL, but how much of it was? Was it inevitable that the professional game would spread to the South and California, for instance?
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