The Complete NHL Expansion History

(last updated on November 5, 2025)

Introduction

The National Hockey League is the premier collection of professional hockey talent globally. Here the most significant players competing at the pinnacle of the sports hierarchy are collected and competing for the prize of lasting glory and hoisting Lord Stanley’s Cup. The NHL has not always been the broad multi-city venture we recognize it as today, comprised of 32 teams. It grew in spurts of NHL expansion, acquisition, and merger to rise from something much smaller. Tighten your skates and sharpen your blade edge because we are about to slide through the story of NHL expansion.

Original Six Hockey Teams

The venture of the National Hockey League had some very humble beginnings. Established as a 10-team conglomerate in the Roaring 1920s, the downsizing of its size was initiated by financial woes caused by the attrition of the Great Depression. After the smoke cleared, only six franchises survived, and this core group is still known as the “Original Six.”

In 1917, Toronto hockey fever raged. The city pulsed with the desire for its own NHL team. Enter Senator Frank Patrick, a visionary leader with ambition and a $15,000 budget. He lured stars like Jack Adams and Cyclone Taylor, forming the “Toronto Arenas” – a name reflecting the city’s beloved skating rinks. Their debut season was electric, igniting passion across the city. But in 1919, a merger saw them reborn as the “Toronto St. Patricks,” reflecting the city’s large Irish community. Success followed, with a Stanley Cup victory in 1922. Yet, a desire for a truly unique Canadian identity persisted. After Conn Smythe purchased the team in 1927, the “Toronto Maple Leafs” were branded, linking the team to Canada’s national symbol.

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The Habs, organized in 1909, are the oldest continuously operating pro ice hockey team in the world and the only existing NHL club that formed before the league. J. Ambrose O’Brien founded the Montreal squad as a charter member of the forerunner of the NHL, the National Hockey Association. The team survived the financial woes of the Great Depression and outlasted a rival Montreal team, the cross-town Maroons, to thrive. The Canadiens have won the Stanley Cup more than any other franchise, having 23 championship banners for the oldest NHL team. 

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The Boston Bruins were born from circumstance and ambition in 1924. Hockey, surging in popularity across the Northeast, found traction in Boston thanks to Charles Adams, a young entrepreneur fueled by the success of the city’s Celtics. He gathered investors and convinced the NHL of Boston’s hunger for the sport. Boston was the first team of expansion and the first franchise housed on US soil. The name “Bruins” emerged from an early hire of the team, former player Art Ross, who felt the franchise could encompass the ferocity of the “brown bear.” He was right as the Bruins have captured six Stanley Cup titles since.

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Since 1986, we have known them by the consolidated moniker of “Blackhawks,” but this frozen pond franchise of the “Windy City” has also won six NHL championships since their inception in 1926.

The expansion franchise was granted to a group spearheaded by former football star Huntington Hardwick of Boston. Hardwick, in turn, purchased the rights of the players of the Portland Rosebuds of the Western Hockey League. Weeks after this, the quite involved Frederic McLaughlin bought the team and sold decades later to the Norris and then the Wirtz families. No matter who held the owner’s tag over the years, the Chicago squad has been a staple in the NHL.

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The Motor City franchise also came to be in 1926 and took advantage of the failing Western League. The Townsend-Seyburn syndicate of Detroit, headed by Charles A. Hughes, purchased the WHL’s roster of the 1925 Stanley Cup champion Victoria Cougars right after being granted an NHL franchise. They kept the Cougars nickname until they adopted the “Falcons” moniker in 1930, which gave way to the Red Wings rebranding in 1932 when new owner, James E. Norris, went to his roots of a former team association in Montreal that used a winged-wheel emblem based on that organization’s cycling roots—the new nickname stuck with the Detroit auto industry connection. The most successful US team is this franchise with 11 Stanley Cup Titles.

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Another American product of the 1926 expansion is the NY Rangers, founded by Tex Rickard, the then President of the Madison Square Gardens in the Big Apple. They competed with the rival franchise, the New York Americans, for years and eventually found their way to win four NHL Titles. They were, however, the first US-based team to win the Stanley Cup in 1928.

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Era of Expansion

The original six were in the NHL for almost four decades until the mid-1960s when the NHL brass felt it was time to grow and cultivate the league by adding franchises. The growth into the US market doubled in size to 12 teams for the 1967–68 season by adding these favorite NHL expansion teams.

The West Coast shores of Southern California seemed an unlikely place to drop a hockey team, but this was a target market for the NHL. The rumors of the Western Hockey League as a competition to the NHL fueled the move to establish an NHL base in SoCal. The Kings have won the Stanley Cup twice since their inception.

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We know the Minnesota North Stars as the Dallas Stars since the 1993 relocation.

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The Flyers came into the NHL by taking their 20 allotted restricted selections of the 1967 Entry Draft and purchasing the minor-league Quebec Aces, giving the early Philly squads a distinctly French-Canadian style of play. The Flyers have won two Stanley Cups since their inception in their journey.

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Pittsburgh’s Penguins weren’t hatched in an icy nest but born from a fan contest. The 1967 expansion team craved a name reflecting its home city’s frozen legacy. Thousands of ideas later, “Penguins” soared to the top, inspired by the Civic Arena’s igloo-like dome and the city’s love for the playful birds. The town was granted a franchise from its success in the NHL, the Pittsburgh Hornets, and a consolidated effort from a local Congressman, Art Rooney of the Steelers, and the prestigious families of the Mellons and Heinz. The Pens have won five Stanley Cups since 1991.

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The California Golden Seals were a former Western Hockey League club based in San Francisco that jumped ship to the NHL in 1967. In the mid-1970s, they moved to Ohio to become the Cleveland Barons and then folded after two years of operations there.

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St. Louis embraced the musical moniker, christening their new hockey franchise the “St. Louis Blues,” forever intertwining the team’s identity with the genre that defines their city inspired by a blues song penned by W.C. Handy in 1914. The Blues drank from the Stanley Cup once in 2019.

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Need for North of the Border Teams

This initial American expansion caused a bit of an uproar with the fans of Canada who now had only two cities represented in the 12-team organization. A second expansion era from 1970 through 1974 helped ease these tensions.

1970 Teams Added…

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1972 Teams Added…

Originally known as the Atlanta Flames, the franchise eventually moved to Calgary.

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 1974 Teams Added…

Originally known as the Kansas City Scouts, the team became the Colorado Rockies in 1976, and then in 1982 a move East rebranded the franchise as the Devils.

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World Hockey Association Merger

Most of the 1970s were a battle of North American professional ice hockey supremacy as the NHL and the newcomer WHA battled for players’ rights in salary negotiations and courtrooms. Finally, in 1979, the bickering was over when the two rival leagues came to terms, and the World Hockey Association merged with the National Hockey League. Here are the new NHL franchises awarded from this.

Originally, the Coyotes were the Winnipeg Jets until 1997, when they moved to the West to become the Phoenix and later Arizona Coyotes. Because of ownership troubles, the franchise folded after the 2023-24 season, so the NHL took over the team and sold its rights to a Utah ownership group.

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Originally known as the Hartford Whalers for a while after the merger, the team changed cities and mascots in 1997.

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The Quebec Nordiques lasted in the NHL for a decade and a half, then moved to Denver to change into the Avalanche.

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Additions of the New Millenium

After the ushering in of the 21st century, the league decided to expand again in some new thriving markets, thirsting for NHL action as more joined the fray.

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This franchise started as the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and, in 2006, emerged as the Anaheim Ducks after the House of Mouse sold the franchise, ending one of Disney’s longest-running and expensive movie promotions.

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The Atlanta Thrashers expansion team survived for a few years in Hot-lanta but, in 2011, moved North to become the new Winnipeg Jets (not to be confused with the WHA merged team formerly known as the Winnipeg Jets and later the Arizona Coyotes). Confused yet?

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When the Arizona Coyotes folded after the 2023-24 season, much of the team’s players and personnel relocated to Utah with the new ownership group. They have been rebranded as the Utah Mammoth.

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Conclusion

As you have seen, the NHL is vibrant and dynamic as the league adds teams, allows movement and rebrandings, and even causes departures for those with financial difficulty. The expansion efforts have created a thriving conglomerate of teams and raised the competitive nature of the sport while allowing more fans around North America to enjoy watching live games. Who knows where they go from here?

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FAQs

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2024 at 5:56 pm and is filed under NHL History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.