It was not a promising start.
Apart from a smooth ceremonial puck drop by Governor General Roland Michener, the debut of the Ottawa Nationals and the World Hockey Association on October 11, 1972, was full of mishaps. The 9,355-seat Ottawa Civic Centre was barely half-full, and most of those in the stands were kids from local minor hockey leagues who’d gotten in for free. They seemingly acted as bratty as possible. “If I had been a guy who had paid premium prices for the show,” Ottawa Citizen columnist Bob Mellor noted, “I’d have had a right to be annoyed, in spite of any obligation the Nats might feel toward building young fans.”
Only half the celebratory balloons fell from the ceiling on cue at the beginning of the evening; when stragglers descended during the game, kids raced after them. Ceremonial pucks were tossed on the ice. Souvenir certificates marking the occasion made excellent paper airplanes. Nationals defenceman Chris Meloff earned the team’s first penalty for retrieving goalie Les Binkley’s stick and touching the puck with it. CBC’s telecast of the game, which included a five-minute power outage, was described by Ottawa Journal TV critic Sandy Gardiner as “the type of TV performance that you wouldn’t pay to see with Monopoly money.”
Pre-season ad for the Nationals. (Ottawa Citizen, August 5, 1972)
To top it all off, the Nationals lost 7-4 to the Alberta Oilers. In a suite at the Chateau Laurier, majority owner Nick Trbovich and team founder Doug Michel were not in a partying mood.
The evening should have been a triumph for the WHA, the latest in a series of rival pro leagues founded by sports entrepreneurs Gary Davidson and Dennis Murphy that had started with the American Basketball Association in 1967. The NHL was ripe for a challenge due to its low salaries (averaging around $25,000 per year) and a reserve cause that automatically extended contracts by a season, tying players down to teams. Though the NHL initially scoffed at the WHA, as the new league moved closer to reality, it announced a two-team expansion for the 1972/73 season, adding the Atlanta Flames and New York Islanders.
Ad for the Nationals' debut. (Ottawa Journal, October 7, 1972)
Among those intrigued by the WHA was Doug Michel. A lifelong hockey fan, Michel had launched the Young Nationals amateur hockey program in Toronto in the late 1960s as a feeder system for the Canadian national team. After reading about the WHA, Michel called the Toronto Star to ask for Davidson’s phone number. While WHA franchises were advertised for $1 million, Davidson indicated the actual price was $25,000 for the team and $10,000 to assist league operations; a $100,000 bond would be required by New Year’s Day, 1972. “When the WHA awarded me a franchise,” Michel recalled in his book Left Wing and a Prayer, “it was like inviting a shoe clerk to the no-limit table at Las Vegas.”
Once the franchise had been granted in November 1971, Michel and Young Nationals co-owner Jim McCreath scouted home cities in Ontario. Initial promises of a city-built arena in Hamilton became an offer to donate land for a rink funded by the new team. Toronto was considered, but Maple Leaf Gardens owner Harold Ballard’s demands were too high.
The league complicated matters when it upped the franchise fee to $210,000. McCreath decided he didn’t like the look of the WHA and soon purchased Michel’s share of the Young Nationals program. Michel raised money by selling off his half of his electrical business, borrowed funds from his former partners and the bank, and renegotiated ownership of personal properties. He lived off his American Express credit card.
Michel negotiated with the Central Canada Exhibition Association, which operated the Ottawa Civic Centre arena. Initially, it feared that the WHA might harm their main tenant, the junior-league Ottawa 67s. To prove his worth, Michel convinced former premier John Robarts to serve as his lawyer. The CCEA wanted a $100,000 cash guarantee, along with rent and 15 per cent of television revenue. The team settled in Ottawa as the Nationals.
While Michel was seeking investors, Davidson warned him not to follow a tip regarding an American sports concessionaire, due to an investigation into alleged Mafia ties. League officials introduced him to Nick Trbovich, a Buffalo businessman who owned a company that produced Bobby Hull-branded tabletop hockey games. Trbovich purchased 80 per cent of the franchise for $200,000. (Trbovich, later balked at providing $100,000 when the league asked each team to contribute to Hull’s $1 million signing bonus with the Winnipeg Jets.)
1972/73 O-Pee-Chee hockey cards for Wayne Carleton (sic), Guy Trottier, and Les Binkley. (Trading Card Database)
Each WHA team placed four NHL stars on its negotiation list. The Nationals came close to signing Maple Leafs captain Dave Keon. Negotiations were frustrating — one moment, Keon and his agent seemed on the verge of signing, and the next, his lawyer threw up roadblocks. Michel agreed to pay Keon $50,000 upfront as a sign of goodwill. A letter of intent was drafted, but, after impossible demands were made (avoiding doing PR for the team, a 25 per cent ownership share, and more) Keon re-signed with the Maple Leafs. Michel was never refunded for the advance.
The Nationals had better luck with other Maple Leafs alumni. Left-winger Wayne Carleton was the first former NHL player to sign with the team. Once a highly touted prospect for Toronto, Carleton had bounced around the NHL and bottomed out during a recent stint with the California Golden Seals, where he developed a careless attitude and a growing fondness for beer. Carleton saw the Nationals as an opportunity to turn his career around — and he did, scoring 42 goals for Ottawa in 1972/73 and being named MVP during the WHA’s first all-star game. He was soon joined by right-wing Guy Trottier, who was tired of riding the Maple Leafs’ bench. To coach, the Nationals signed Billy Harris, who had played 10 seasons with Toronto. Harris had spent the previous season coaching the Swedish national team and implemented European conditioning techniques, including weight training and isometric exercises.
Hockey Hall of Fame exhibit showing the first goal scored in the WHA, by Ron Anderson of the Alberta Oilers against the Nationals. (Jamie Bradburn)
During exhibition season, the Nationals were, like most WHA teams, a collection of veteran minor leaguers and recent junior prospects, with a sprinkling of NHLers who’d made the jump. Since Bobby Hull had been the league’s marquee signing, the Nationals signed his younger brother Garry, who had never played above junior level and become a farmer. “Any hockey sense I had told me that if a third Hull brother existed, it was inconceivable he could have arrived at 27 years of age without being thoroughly scouted by every hockey man in the business,” Michel later recalled. After his signing in June, a PR release was widely mocked for claiming that Garry’s brothers believed he was the best player of them all. Unfortunately, he was a weak skater and ended up getting cut two days before the season opener.
Attendance was atrocious following the season opener, and even Garry’s brother couldn’t sell out the Civic Centre. Just over 5,000 attended on November 9 to watch Bobby’s second game with the Jets after the lifting of an injunction that had prevented him from playing in the WHA. Though the Nationals lost 4-1, Trbovich was at the game and found it “encouraging.” To rustle up enthusiasm, eight local businessmen formed a booster club in mid-December. But even Henry Feller, the head of the Ottawa Faceoff Club, admitted to the Ottawa Journal that he wouldn’t blame the team for moving, given its cool reception.
As 1973 dawned, average attendance hovered under 2,000, and the Nationals were constantly outdrawn by the 67s. A steady stream of rumours reflected numerous offers to buy and move the Nationals. League officials openly admitted that placing a team in Ottawa had been a mistake. At league meetings during the first week of January, Trbovich dismissed rumours that he might buy the equally troubled New York Raiders, and though he admitted he’d move the Nationals if the right offer came along, he said he was still willing to give Ottawa a chance. Discussions were held with Ottawa mayor Pierre Benoit for aid, which the city was willing to considering if the team were to finish the season in the city and lower ticket prices. The negotiations fell apart, primarily over rental charges. “We’re not in the business of subsidizing professional hockey clubs,” Benoit observed. A deal to move the team to Milwaukee in February fell apart.
Photo of Ottawa mayor Pierre Benoit and Doug Michel. (Ottawa Journal, April 4, 1973)
As the season wound down, the Nationals caught fire and earned a playoff spot — thanks, in part, to eccentric rookie goalie Gilles Gratton. Though highly skilled, Gratton often caused havoc: he believed in astrological charts and reincarnation, refusing to play when the signs didn’t line up. He also had a “dead fish” routine, which saw him flop to the ice as if he’d been shot. Whenever the team trainer rushed out, Gratton would ask him whether his performance had been good enough to amuse fans and his teammates.
Though attendance crept up, it was nowhere near what the team needed. “It has become painfully apparent that the citizens of Ottawa don’t desire or deserve to have a major professional hockey franchise in their community,” syndicated sports columnist Jim Coleman observed as the playoffs neared.
Excitement about the playoffs was ruined by conflict with the Central Canada Exhibition Association, which demanded the Nationals pay a $100,000 bond for the 1973/74 season by March 15. The team declined, noting that control of the arena would pass from the CCEA to the city on May 1, and it preferred not paying a landlord that would soon be gone. Benoit rejected requests from city councillors to lock out the team. The loudest critic was Garry Guzzo — a CCEA director and member of the city’s Board of Control who later served as an MPP — who was furious that the Nationals hadn’t paid the bond. “If a circus or some other Civic Centre tenant behaved like the hockey club,” Guzzo declared, “the doors would have been closed to them.”
“If I were the owner of the Ottawa Nationals at this point,” Mellor observed in his March 30 Citizen column, “I would swiftly conclude that I’m not welcome in this city, and I’d get the hell out.”
And the team proceeded to try to do just that, inquiring about the availability of Maple Leaf Gardens for the playoffs. While negotiations went on with Harold Ballard (who was serving a sentence in Millhaven for fraud and tax evasion) and his son Bill, rumours also spread that John F. Bassett was interested in buying the team and permanently moving it to Toronto. The Nationals finished the regular season in Ottawa on April Fools’ Day with a 6-3 loss to the Houston Aeros.
Cover of "Left Wing and a Prayer," by Doug Michel and Bob Mellor (left); photo of Doug Michel from back cover.
At an April 2 meeting, Ottawa city council discussed the fate of the Nationals. Team management denied reports they were heading to Toronto and offered assurances that their playoff games would be at the Civic Centre. Guzzo, claiming that he was a hockey fan, said that any move would be “distasteful and very objectionable to the fans who have rallied around the team.” The city indicated it might renegotiate the team’s terms if they paid the $100,000 bond.
Earlier that day, around 1:30 p.m., the phone had rung at Trottier’s home. It was assistant coach Phil Lacey. “Get your bags packed. We’re moving to Toronto.” The move was confirmed by Trbovich during an April 4 press conference, though Michel indicated a new lease might be negotiated in Ottawa. The CCEA vowed to hold the team to the terms of its contract, which eventually resulted in a lawsuit.
The post-season was brief. After two losses against the New England Whalers in Boston, the Nationals won their first game at the Gardens 4-2, then dropped the rest of the series.
The following month, the team was sold to Bassett and renamed the Toronto Toros. Trbovich, Mellor later estimated, may have made over $1 million in financial transactions related to the team. Michel was financially drained and soon moved his family to Coboconk. Ottawa briefly hosted a WHA franchise when the Ottawa Civics lasted for two weeks in 1976.
A family feud between Bassett (whose father was a former Maple Leaf Gardens director) and the Ballards led the team to Varsity Arena, which held under 5,000. Due to scheduling conflicts, the Toros played nine games in Ottawa during the 1973/74 season. The Toros were never financially successful; Ottawa was contemplated as a new home before the team moved to Birmingham, Alabama, in 1976. Renamed the Bulls, the team survived until the WHA folded in 1979.
Summing up the Nationals, forward Bob Charlebois told the Ottawa Citizen a quarter-century after the team’s demise that they were never accepted by the locals: “It was difficult to play before such small crowds. It was so unusual to have the junior team more popular than the pro team.”
Sources: Left Wing and a Prayer by Doug Michel and Bob Mellor (unlisted: Excalibur Sports Publications, 1974); The Rebel League by Ed Willes (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2004); the December 16, 1972, edition of Canadian Magazine; the September 12, 1972, January 18, 1973, and April 4, 1973, editions of the Globe and Mail; the April 1974 edition of Hockey Digest; the January 27, 1972, October 12, 1972, November 10, 1972, January 5, 1973, February 9, 1973, March 27, 1973, March 30, 1973, April 3, 1973, March 20, 1975, and December 31, 1997, editions of the Ottawa Citizen; and the October 12, 1972, December 13, 1972, January 6, 1973, January 8, 1973, and May 6, 1976, editions of the Ottawa Journal.
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