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The WCHL—Pros On The Prairies
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After the First World War, the
National Hockey League had begun to
outstrip the Pacific Coast Hockey League as the more
important pro league in the country.
Some of the biggest stars of the PCHA,
including Hall of Famers Didier Pitre and Newsy Lalonde,
had gone back to the Eastern NHL clubs. The PCHA teams
suspended operations at an alarming rate. The
big-spending ways of the PCHA owners—who, between
1911 and 1920, had attempted to pry all the major names from the
eastern clubs by establishing pro powerhouses in the West
like the Vancouver Millionaires and Seattle
Metropolitans—had come back to haunt them. In 1918, Even
though the Seattle Metropolitans won the Stanley Cup in 1917, the PCHL’s
decision to focus expansion in the United States had
been a disaster. One after another, teams like the
the Portland Rosebuds ceased operation.
And while the PCHL had initiated many
exciting rule changes, such as the introduction of changing on the fly and the
penalty shot, it refused to modernize the game in the
same way the
NHL had. The PCHL still held onto the notion of hockey
as a seven-a-side game, with three forwards, a
defenceman, a goaltender and a rover. That led to a clogged
ice surface that restricted scoring chances.
If pro hockey was to flourish in
Western Canada, more pro teams were needed on the
Prairies. In 1921, four new pro clubs, the Edmonton
Eskimos, Calgary Tigers, Regina Capitals and Saskatoon
Shieks formed the new Western Canada Hockey League.
Surprisingly, the new league chose to stick with the
antiquated Western rules and keep the rovers. It was agreed that the winner of the WCHL title would play the PCHL champion for the right to
represent the West in the Stanley Cup final against the
NHL champion from the East.
Only months after the start of the
WCHL, money problems forced the Shieks to leave
Saskatoon for Moose Jaw. The Shieks would not continue
after the season, and were replaced by the Saskatoon
Crescents the next year. That first season, the
second-place Regina team upset the regular-season
champions from Edmonton in the WCHL final, but lost to
Vancouver in the PCHL/WCHL showdown. The NHL’s
Toronto St. Patricks—who would later change their name
to the Maple Leafs—won the 1922 Cup.
The next season brought more
innovations to the WCHA. Both eastern leagues decided to
modernize their rules, ridding themselves of the rover
position. Now, hockey was a universal six-aside game
from coast to coast.
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