The WCHL—Changing The Face of Junior Hockey

The Edmonton Oil Kings had established themselves as the top team in Western Canadian junior hockey, making seven straight trips to the Memorial Cup final from 1960-66.

But in each of those seasons, the Oil Kings did not play their regular season schedule in a junior league. In 1956, then-general manager Leo LeClerc decided that it was in the best interest of his elite junior squad to play Alberta senior hockey.

But, with the evolution of other powerful major junior programs in the West, including the likes of the Saskatoon Blades and Estevan Bruins, new Oil Kings owner and president Bill Hunter believed that the club would draw more fans if it played against more of the top junior clubs on a regular basis.

Scotty Munro, general manager of the Estevan Bruins and an old friend of Hunter’s, agreed; the two rallied and gained the support of some the most influential junior clubs in Saskatchewan and Alberta and, in 1966, the seven-team Western Canadian Hockey League (WCHL) was formed. The Oil Kings and the Regina Pats, the oldest recognized junior franchise in Canada, were cornerstones of the new league. The Calgary Buffaloes were Alberta’s other entry into the league.

While the new WCHL was a hit with fans, it angered Canadian hockey officials, who ruled that the new league’s champion would not be eligible for the Memorial Cup. The WCHL allowed players aged 21 and under, and teams could get special dispensation to keep 22-year-olds. Meanwhile, Canadian junior hockey rules specified that eligible players must be 19 or younger.

Hunter argued that giving players an extra two or three years of eligibility allowed the junior clubs to keep their lineups more consistent from year to year, allowing team the chance to offer a better product to the fans. The Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA) saw it as cheating—and that was that. The Moose Jaw Canucks took the first WCHL title in 1967, but were not invited to the Memorial Cup.

Because the five Saskatchewan teams defected from that province’s officially-sanctioned junior league in June of 1966 under less-than-amicable conditions (the revel teams complained that the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League had allowed too many poor sisters in the league, putting the league into financial crisis), the CAHA did not recognize the WCHL and even went as far to tell Hunter and Munro that their junior clubs would get no support from the National Hockey League. Scared by the sabre-rattling, the Pats left the league after the 1967/68 season, but it did not stop the WCHL from expanding rapidly. There was nothing the CAHA could do to stop the upstart new league, and compromise on eligibility was soon reached and the WCHL was entrenched in the Memorial Cup process. Since 1972, when the Memorial Cup was changed from a two-team championship series to a four-team round robin, the Western Canadian Hockey League has been guaranteed representation at the tournament.

By 1977, the league had 12 franchises in all four Western provinces as well as three more in the United States (Billings Bighorns, Portland Winter Hawks and Seattle Breakers). Because of the new American clubs, the league was rechristened "The Western Hockey League," a name it still holds today. Of the original seven clubs that took part in the WCHL, only the Regina Pats and Saskatoon Blades remain—but the WHL has grown into the most powerful of the three major Canadian junior leagues, proven by the fact WHL teams have won 15 Memorial Cups from 1972-2003.

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