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It's time for the National Hockey League and the Hamilton Tigers to return to Hamilton, according to millions of Canadians, and other hockey fans.
The NHL is buzzing about Wayne Gretzky's Phoenix Coyotes moving to southern Ontario.
Most of the Tigers fans are from Hamilton or nearby in southern Ontario. They are buzzing about BlackBerry billionaire Jim Balsillie's bid to bring the Phoenix Coyotes to the Copps Coliseum.
The story of how NHL hockey moved from Hamilton to New York in 1925 proved to be the single most important franchise relocation in league history, according to Myer Siemiatycki, a professor at Ryerson University.
Siemiatycki wrote an opinion piece for the Toronto Star as a fan of the Hamilton Tigers. He says it was a "distress sale" that took the Tigers away from Hamilton more than 80 years ago and paved the way for the NHL to make it big in the United States.
Founded in 1917 as a four-team Canadian league, the NHL had its first expansion in the 1924-25 season. A second team was added in Montreal (the Maroons), and the addition of the Boston Bruins brought the first American city into the league.
After the 1919–20 season, the NHL took back the Quebec Bulldogs franchise and sold the team to the Abso Pure Ice Company of Hamilton. The club was moved to Hamilton for the 1920–21 season and renamed the Hamilton Tigers.
In 1920, Hamilton was the fifth-largest city in Canada with a population of 114,200 when Toronto had half a million.
After four years, things started to come together for the Hamilton Tigers in the 1923–24 NHL season. They signed four players from the Sudbury Wolves of the Northern Ontario Hockey Association (NOHA): Red Green and Shorty Green, Alex McKinnon, and Charlie Langlois.
The Hamilton Tigers roared off to an impressive 10–4–1 start in the 1924–25 NHL season. Halfway through the season, they had more wins than any other season in their NHL history.
The team finished first overall with a record of 19 wins, 10 losses, and one tie, just ahead of the Toronto St. Patricks. The Hamilton Tigers had a chance at winning the Stanley Cup for the first time since they won it as the Quebec Bulldogs in 1913.
The Hamilton Tigers lost their championship chance in March 1925, when the league president disqualified the club from the Stanley Cup playoffs. It was the only time in NHL history that an entire team was disqualified and all its players suspended.
The Hamilton Tigers players went on strike to protest unfair salary treatment. The NHL schedule grew from 24 to 30 games but the hockey players were paid the same.
They were not pleased about playing 25 per cent more games with no additional salary. Also,the players got no share of playoff game revenues.
At the end of the regular season, all Hamilton players served notice they would not suit up for a playoff game unless paid to play. The NHL's first president, Frank Calder, had the Hamilton Tigers players terminated.
After the season's final game, the Tigers' players went to their general manager, Percy Thompson, and demanded $200 pay for the six extra games they played that season. He refused.
The Montreal Canadiens were declared league champions and each player on the Hamilton Tigers was fined $200.
The Canadiens went on
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