1978 NHL Waiver Draft

The fall-out from the 1978 Waiver Draft would make this one of the most interesting developments in league politics, Montreal Canadiens history, and relations between the NHL and NHLPA in the late 1970s.

Protected lists this year were 18 skaters, two goaltenders, and two other players with no more than two years of pro experience. I haven't found the entire protected lists but I know Rod Schutt and Pat Hughes were the Canadiens' two young 'additions'.

Player	Picked by	Picked from	Player dropped from protected list	Claim player or cash
Round 1
Pierre Bouchard	Washington Capitals	Montreal Canadiens	?	$2,500
Larry Giroux	St. Louis Blues	Detroit Red Wings	?	$12,500
Pierre Plante	New York Rangers	Detroit Red Wings	?	$10,000
Jim Lorentz	Detroit Red Wings	Buffalo Sabres	?	$2,500
Round 2
Mike Korney	New York Rangers	Montreal Canadiens	Dan Newman	claim

Although only five players were chosen—two more than in 1977—this draft took over two hours to complete on October 9, 1978. "Why did it take so long," you ask? The Montreal Canadiens.

First, the Canucks tried to claim Cam Connor from the Canadiens. Connor had played in the WHA and never signed a contract in the NHL with the Canadiens. The Canucks reasoned that given he had completed four years of pro hockey in the WHA and was not on the Canadiens' protected list he should have been eligible for selection. The Canucks' move to acquire Connor was deliberated over the conference call and rejected on the basis that Connor was not even on the Canadiens reserve list, had never signed an NHL contract, and was therefore an unsigned draft choice ineligible for selection.

The Rockies pulled the same move as the Canucks, claiming Mark Napier from the Canadiens. Again, despite the fact that Napier had played in the WHA for three years he had never signed an NHL contract so in the eyes of the league and under the terms of the waiver draft by-law had never played 'professionally'. He was an unsigned amateur draft choice, ineligible for selection.

This despite the fact both Connor and Napier had attended the Canadiens' training camp in '78, and it was a foregone conclusion that they would play for the Canadiens in '78-'79. The fact they hadn't signed with the Canadiens was a formality. The Canucks and Rockies protested that the Canadiens were deliberately evading the rules of the waiver draft.

More controversy erupted when the North Stars (who would have normally had the first overall pick due to having finished last in '77-'78; they were moved to last in the selection order as a condition of the merger with the Cleveland Barons) tried to claim Bill Nyrop from the Canadiens. Nyrop grew up in Minnesota, married a girl from Minnesota in August of '78, and abruptly left Canadiens' training camp in September to move back to Minnesota. Nyrop was suspended by the league—at the Canadiens' behest—for failing to report back to training camp. The Canadiens were accused again of trying to evade the rules and use every loophole at their disposal.

(Nyrop was eventually traded to the North Stars in 1980.)

The most controversial outcome of the draft wouldn't come until days afterward. The Capitals used their first overall choice to pick Pierre Bouchard of the Canadiens. The Canadiens didn't have room to protect all of their veteran players so GM Irving Grundman, successor to legendary GM Sam Pollock, left Bouchard exposed and made a backroom deal with the Capitals: if the Capitals chose Bouchard with the first overall choice and traded him back to the Canadiens later the Canadiens would give the Capitals Rod Schutt, a former first-round amateur draft pick who had played two good seasons with the AHL's Nova Scotia Voyageurs.

On October 10 (the day after the draft) they made the trade: Bouchard from the Capitals back to the Canadiens for Schutt.

However, the next day league president John Ziegler voided the deal and cited the league by-laws: Bouchard could not be traded—to the Canadiens or anyone else—without having cleared waivers. Grundman and Capitals GM Max McNab misread the rules. The following Monday, October 16, the Canadiens and Capitals appealed to the Board of Governors to have the waiver draft by-law rewritten to allow the trade. The appeal was unsuccessful, and Bouchard remained with the Capitals.

Bouchard was a native Montrealer, son of former Canadiens captain Émile "Butch" Bouchard, and had no interest in playing hockey for any other team. Rather than report to Washington he quit altogether, announcing his retirement. It was Irv Grundman's first gaffe (first of many...) as general manager of the Canadiens.

←1977 Waiver Draft

1980 Waiver Draft→

NHL Draft Results

Sources:
Ramsay, Donald. (Oct. 14, 1978). "NHL's legal costs may hit $5-million". Globe & Mail: Toronto. p.S12 accessed online April 7, 2013

1978 NHL Dispersal Draft

If you were forced to sum up the business of hockey in the 1970s with only one word I think a very strong argument could be made for the word 'expansion'. In 1966 there were six 'major' professional hockey teams in North America. By 1974 there were 32; 18 in the NHL and 14 in the WHA. In retrospect this number of teams was far more than the market could support and the WHA, on relatively shaky financial ground, dwindled down from 14 teams in '74-'75 to only six in their last season of play, '78-'79. While the NHL was substantially stronger it was not immune to the effects of "over-expansion" and in 1978 the Cleveland Barons, the franchise formerly known as the California Golden Seals and one of the first NHL franchises to have moved its operations since the Ottawa Senators moved to St. Louis in 1934, were on the verge of insolvency.

The Barons had seemingly been on the cusp of folding ever since they had moved to Cleveland in 1976. They narrowly escaped death in February of 1977 when the owners couldn't make payroll. Majority owner Mel Swig, a San Francisco real estate developer and former owner of the Seals when they played in the WHL in the '60s, sold his share at the end of the '76-'77 season to minority owners George and Gordon Gund, venture capitalists from Cleveland who orchestrated the move from Oakland to the Coliseum at Richfield. The Gund brothers operated the Barons for another year, lost a reported $3,500,000 doing so, and were looking to fold the team outright.

The NHL faced other problems too, namely the New York Islanders and the Minnesota North Stars. The Islanders were in heavy debt, no doubt in part a result of the arduous expansion fees paid in 1972. They still owed millions to the league. Operating partner Roy Boe sold his stake in the Islanders that summer to minority partner John Pickett, who came to agreements to pay off the team's debts.

The North Stars weren't in immediate danger of folding, not like the Barons were, but the owners were fed up with losing money and looking to sell. The nine-man group composed of Walter Bush Jr., John Driscoll, Harry McNeely, Robert McNulty, John Ordway, F. T. Weyerhauser, Bob Ridder, Gordon Ritz and Wheelock Whitney Jr. found buyers in George and Gordon Gund. Rather than fold the Barons outright the Gunds negotiated with the North Stars ownership group and the league (in particular board chairman John Ziegler, who helped save the team in '77) to come to a compromise: the Barons and North Stars would merge.

This agreement was reached on June 14, the day before the Amateur Draft took place. The Gund brothers would assume ownership of the combined team, to remain in Minnesota and retain the North Stars name and colours, and take the Barons' place in the Adams Division. The 'new' North Stars would forfeit all of the Barons' amateur draft picks and allow the five other worst teams in the league to have their pick of North Stars and Barons players in a brief dispersal draft. The draft would only last one round, the only participants would be the Capitals, Blues, Canucks, Penguins and Rockies (in that order), and the teams would pay the North Stars $30,000 for each selection.

The Dispersal Draft was held immediately preceding the Amateur Draft at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. The North Stars would be allowed to protect 10 skaters and a pair of goalies from the combined pool of North Stars and Barons players. After the Capitals and Blues had made their selections the North Stars would be able to add another player to their protected list, and again after the Canucks and Penguins had made their choices.

All of the Barons' amateur draft picks were cancelled (including the fourth round pick held by the Islanders) except for the second round pick held by the Capitals and, depending on the Capitals' course of action, the first round pick. The Capitals were given a choice between exercising the first pick in the dispersal draft or using the Barons' first round amateur draft pick (which would also be moved to last in the round, 18th overall, instead of the original 5th overall). The Islanders' fourth round pick, held by the Barons, was forfeited; the Islanders would not be able to use the Barons' pick or their own in the fourth round.

Barons GM Harry Howell and North Stars GM Lou Nanne worked together to pick the protected players. They protected an equal number of players from each team. From the North Stars they chose to retain Per-Olov Brasar, Brad Maxwell, Bryan Maxwell, Glen Sharpley, Tim Young and goalie Pete LoPresti. From the Barons they protected Mike Fidler, Rick Hampton, Al MacAdam, Dennis Maruk, Greg Smith and goalie Gilles Meloche.

Player Chosen	By
forfeited	Washington Capitals
Mike Crombeen	St. Louis Blues
Ron Zanussi	Minnesota North Stars (fill-in)
Randy Holt	Vancouver Canucks
passed	Pittsburgh Penguins
Bob Stewart	Minnesota North Stars (fill-in)
passed	Colorado Rockies

The Capitals chose to forfeit the first pick in the dispersal draft in exchange for the last pick in the first round of the amateur draft (they chose Tim Coulis). The Penguins and Rockies didn't bother picking players and waived their picks altogether (I suspect they didn't want to pay the $30,000 asking price).

This brief affair, carried out the morning of June 15, was the final footnote in the tumultuous existence of the Barons/Seals franchise.


Trivia for you: the Gunds didn't make much money in Minnesota either. By 1989 they wanted to move the team to the San Francisco Bay Area, where there were rumours of a new arena to be built in the early '90s. The NHL, wanting to keep a team in The State of Hockey, wouldn't approve the move. The Gunds threatened to move the team anyway and take the NHL to court if they tried to stop them, as Al Davis did when he moved the NFL's Raiders to Los Angeles. As a compromise the league allowed the Gunds to sell the team to Howard Baldwin and Morris Belzberg, who would ostensibly keep the North Stars in Minnesota, while the Gunds would get an expansion franchise to play in the Bay Area beginning in 1991, a year before the NHL had intended on expanding. The Gunds' new team would get to take some of the North Stars' players with them and the North Stars would participate in the 1991 Expansion Draft alongside the new team. That team became the San Jose Sharks, of course. Isn't it a strange coincidence that the men who moved pro hockey out of the Bay Area in 1976 and merged that failed enterprise into the North Stars in 1978 would split the North Stars apart in 1991 to put pro hockey back in the Bay Area?