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BALTIMORE BLADES HISTORY

from WHAhockey.com

The Baltimore Blades were a troubled franchise before ever stepping on the ice. Peter Shagena and Charles Nolton bought the Los Angeles Sharks from league co-founder Dennis Murphy in the summer of 1974 and moved them to Detroit, renaming the team the Michigan Stags for the league's third season. But although hockey in Detroit seems like a natural, they couldn't secure decent television coverage. Management had to cut costs by trading their one marquee player, Marc Tardif, to the Quebec Noridques. A dismal showing after 61 games had the team on the brink of packing it in. Not wanting to see a club fold in mid-season, the league all but forced the Stags to move to Baltimore to play out the remainder of the year in The Baltimore Arena. With a capacity of 11,000, they had the benefit of one of the league's better facilities. But with the NHL icing the Washington Capitals just down the road in Landover the year before, the Blades' future looked bleak. Despite having Jerry Desjardins between the pipes, the team managed only 3 wins in their 17 games in Baltimore, finishing with the second worst record in the league. A massive campaign to keep the Blades in Baltimore was implemented, but two bad teams in 2 different leagues was too much for DC hockey fans. One had to go ... Shagena and Nolton planned to relocate the club again, this time to Seattle, Washington. The move would never materialize however. Unable to secure a rink or many other necessities if the team planned to survive, they officially folded in May of 1975. On a side note, Desjardins jumped just prior to the team folding and landed in Buffalo, where he and the Sabres went to the Stanley Cup finals the next season.

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Left winger Gary Veneruzzo (left) was the Blades leading scorer with 33 goals and 60 points. Jean-Paul Leblanc (center) led the team in assists (33) and penalty minutes (100). Gerry Desjardins (right, 4.26 GAA) and Paul Hoganson (below, 4.12 GAA), who also appeared in three games with the Baltimore Clippers in 1970, shared goaltending duties. The Blades played just 17 games in Baltimore; going 3-17-1 which thanks to the failed tenure of the ABA's Baltimore Claws, was not the shortest sports tenure in Charm City history.

A day for sharpening Blades' memories

By PHIL JACKMAN, Baltimore Sun, 2/2/95

Happy Anniversary!

Aw, you forgot. But don't be too disheartened. It was not the most memorable time in Baltimore sports history by any means.

Still, on this night 20 years ago, Feb. 2, 1975, the downtown area was jumping, similar to a premiere of a Barry Levinson movie. More than 9,000 people showed up at the Civic Center, forking over between $4 to $6.50 to welcome the Baltimore Blades to town.

Ah, the Blades and the World Hockey Association, what a joy they were while they lasted here, which was about four months. As the old Baltimore Clipper Kent Douglas put it after the WHA pushed his American League team into oblivion, "They were worse than us."

Small wonder.

The year before, the 1973-74 season, a franchise known as the Los Angeles Sharks had stumbled to the end of a second bad campaign and was summarily dismissed to Detroit to become the Michigan Stags.

Finances were not a problem in the Midwest for the simple reason Stags owners lacked resources. That was in keeping with the way the WHA operated, the league already forced to take control of four franchises in its first years of operation.

"I knew in training camp we were not going to be a competitive team," coach Johnny Wilson admitted, "but there was simply no money to do anything about it." Except play.

And play the Stags didn't. By late January, their season was in such disarray that they simply canceled their last six home games leading up to Baltimore's proudly announcing it had landed this big-league franchise.

Then-Mayor William Donald Schaefer pushed and pushed the Greater Baltimore Committee to bring the team aboard and Bill Boucher, executive director of the GBC, along with a mighty push from the Baltimore Sun, got the job done. Unfortunately.

As Clippers general manager Terry Reardon said, "The WHA coming to town effectively put us out of business. It didn't make much sense having two teams in the Civic Center."

After folding the Clips, Reardon, who had worked hockey here for a dozen years, fell heir to a position with the Blades, but was canned in about a week, an awful public relations move.

If the team was rotten in Michigan, it was even worse here because two Stags players immediately jumped to the NHL, two more simply went home and the rest continued to grumble about lack of paychecks.

Then there was the attempt to put together local ownership. A "Save the Blades" campaign was started by you-know-who and it went mostly unnoticed.

Attendance tumbled quickly as the struggling and inept team, with no time to promote, was forced into "guaranteed win" nights. A fan in attendance was treated to a free game if the team didn't win that evening. Average attendance was just over 3,000 as the end of the season neared and the big push was on for local money to purchase the Blades from the league.

Deadlines, similar to those announced every third day during the baseball and hockey strikes, came and were extended. And extended. Mid-April became mid-May and jumped into June before it was decided Baltimore was not long for the WHA. It was when the team's record was at 15-39-3 and home games looked like practice sessions at the Civic Center that Bud Poile, head of WHA operations, said, "I see a lot of good signs here."

League president Dennis Murphy said at least a thousand times: "We did not come to Baltimore short-term." His proposed "special draft to make the Blades competitive" never materialized.

The Blades weren't the only problem in the WHA at the time. The Chicago Cougars were on life support and one of the cities mentioned for expansion, Miami, didn't even have an arena.

Another prospective expansion site, Calgary, already had failed. Regardless, the WHA insisted it was going to grow from 15 to 18 teams within three seasons. Not with Baltimore in the mix, however.

But that night two decades ago was a happening to remember, even though the home team fell to the Houston Aeros and the legendary Gordie Howe, 5-2.

For a while, at least, it got the minds of local fans off the fact that the day before, Feb. 1, the city had lost another of its big-league franchises, the Baltimore Banners of World Team Tennis.

Easy come, easy go.