Is Kansas City more of a hockey town than Los Angeles?

On the surface, you might not think of Kansas City as a hockey town. Instead, your sports mind probably first takes you to baseball's Royals or football's Chiefs.

But, eight miles down the road from the home stadiums of those two teams, a pair of NHL hockey clubs will square off in a sold out arena - setting a pre-season attendance record for games held in non-NHL cities.

Get out your time machine though, because today's New Jersey Devils were once the Colorado Rockies and before that, they began as the Kansas City Scouts.

The city was awarded an NHL franchise in 1972. Two years later they began play in Kemper Arena, along with the Kings. No, not the LA Kings, but the NBA's Kansas City Kings - who had been the Cincinnati Royals for decades prior, but changed their name to the Kings, so not to be confused with the local baseball team.

Speaking of the LA Kings, remember those two dismal stretches last season when the team was struggling to win games? That pales in comparison to what the Scouts went through in their second season.  First, they went winless in 16 games coming out of the Christmas break. They finally won a game, then began another downward spiral - finding a way to go twenty-seven games without a win down the stretch and finished 1-35-8 in their final forty games.

They didn't make the playoffs that year. Just sayin'.

The Scouts weren't the area's first hockey team though.

Kansas City's pro hockey history began in 1928, with the Pla-Mors of the American Hockey Association.

Throwback Thursdays - Interview w/ Brian Kilrea

Ottawa is a long way from Los Angeles.

Yet, the older you get, the more you realize the world we live in is actually a rather small place. The hockey world is even smaller.

On October 14, 1967 Brian Kilrea was one of about two dozen players that made up the inaugural L.A. Kings roster. On that specific night, he was skating on a line with Ted Irvine and Lowell MacDonald at the Long Beach Arena. Their new home - The Forum in Inglewood - wouldn't be ready for a few more months.

About 2,400 miles away in Ottawa, a 17-year old Terry Murray was just beginning his junior hockey career as a defenseman for the Ottawa 67s - as luck would have it, also an expansion team.

Later that night, Kilrea would forever become linked with the Kings, scoring the first goal in franchise history.

Today, the two men have switched teams. Murray is now the coach in Los Angeles and Kilrea is the General Manager back in Ottawa.  However, the path that has taken 'Killer' (as he's affectionately known) from the Kings of '67 to the front office of the 67s, was a road filled with many twists and turns.

A few years after requesting a demotion to the minor leagues during his first season with the Kings, he eventually moved on to a successful coaching career in the OHL - a job that saw him tend herd over teams that once included Jim Fox...and more recently, featured one of the Kings draft picks earlier this summer, Tyler Toffoli.

Along the way he won over 1,100 games behind the bench, led two teams to the Memorial Cup (1984 and 1999), won the OHL title three times, was a five-time OHL Coach of the Year and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2003.

Not bad for a guy that only played 26 NHL games.

In the interview below we cover it all. From the first goal in Kings history to some of the players he's been associated with throughout his illustrious career.

MM: Take us back to October of '67.  The Kings are playing the Flyers and you score the first-ever goal for the team...

Teddy Irvine carried the puck down the left wing, they went into the corner - he and Lowell McDonald - and they were battling for the puck. They fed it to me in the slot and I got off a quick shot. I wouldn't say I picked my shot, but I one timed it and it found room to go in. That goal got us back in the game, after being down 2-0. We went on to win that game 4-2. I scored into the empty net with less than a minute to go also.

After the game, Jack Kent Cooke, our owner, came down to the locker room and was going around congratulating everybody for winning the first game. The trainer had already given me the puck from earlier. So, when he came to talk to me, I gave the puck to him. You would have thought I gave him a million dollars or a puck of gold. He was just delighted, smiling from ear to ear. He really treasured that memento, the first goal for the Los Angeles Kings.

Any off ice memories with your linemates or some of the other guys that first season in L.A.?

Terry Murray likes Seals, not Sharks

The 49ers have more championships and the Giants get way more press. There's the Raiders, who are...well, the Raiders. You can throw in the A's and the Warriors too. However, the only professional sports team in Northern California to have any kind of success the last few years has been the San Jose Sharks.

And while they might be the darlings of the greater Bay Area at the moment, life for hockey fans up there hasn't always been so pleasurable. Long before anybody was wearing their teal with pride, there was another hockey team in the dreaded land of wine and cheese (or is it whine and cheese?). That team put fans through nine losing seasons before skipping town.

Back in 1967, when the NHL was adding its Second Six, the TV contract at the time called for two teams in California. One went to Jack Kent Cooke in Los Angeles and the other to Barry Van Gerbig (singer Bing Crosby's godson).

Van Gerbig had assembled an ownership group the year before and purchased the San Fransisco Seals of the rival WHL. As a way to appeal to a larger audience he changed the name to the California Seals for the move to the NHL in '67. Like all things surrounding the Seals, that didn't last long. Just two months into their inaugural NHL season the name was changed to the Oakland Seals.

Chaos was always surrounding the team. They were nearly sold on multiple occasions in the first few years, never had a stable building arrangement and roster turnover was omnipresent - with only seven players returning for their second season.

Charlie Finley of the Oakland A's finally bought the team as they entered their third season. Soon after came another name change - now the California Golden Seals - and crazy marketing tactics, like green and gold skates.

The team was being run at the time by a guy named Bill Torrey, who later went on to become GM of the legendary New York Islanders of the '80s - winners of four straight Stanley Cups.

It was Torrey, who in the seventh round of the 1970 NHL Draft (#88 overall) selected Ottawa 67's defenseman Terry Murray. Yes, the same Terry Murray who now coaches Los Angeles.

Long before he was a King, he was a NoCal. Murray played in 90 games for the Seals over the course of three seasons in the early '70s. He was eventually signed by the Flyers as a free agent in 1975. His playing days were over by 1982.

Meanwhile, the Seals continued their tumultuous existence. Along the way they almost moved to Vancouver, Buffalo and Indianapolis. Murray wasn't the only future Kings coach to play for the Seals though, Tom Webster played seven games for California in 1971, before suffering a season ending back injury. Yet another connection to the Kings saw the Seals draft future Triple Crown winger Charlie Simmer in 1974. He debuted with the team the following season, scoring 21 points in 35 games.

Then things finally came to an end in 1976 when the Seals were relocated to Cleavland and renamed the Barons. In a move that should have surprised nobody, given the history of the Seals, the Barons failed as well and after two seasons were merged with the Minnesota North Stars.

Coincidentally, it was the Stars who almost became the Sharks. After experiencing financial trouble in Minnesota the team was considering moving West. The NHL wanted no part of that idea and a compromise was eventually reached. The then owners of the Stars, the Gund Brothers, sold their stake in the team to former Whalers owner Howard Baldwin. The Gund's were then awarded the expansion Sharks, who began play with the 1990-91 season.

A long and windy road that leads us to tonight.

The Kings are 47-47-14 all time versus the Sharks, including 3-0-1 this season. Considering the Kings are 0-2 on their current homestand...and have looked pretty flat overall...this is, you guessed it, another big game.

The Mayor
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Kansas City - Loving Hockey since 1928

So you think you've had it rough as a long suffering Kings fans? I know, misery since 1967, with few bright spots along the way. Well, how about the fine folks of Kansas City - they were awarded their first pro team back in 1928. In January of that year the Pla-Mors of the American Hockey Association opened up their inaugural season. Nothing good has really happened in KC since, at least hockey wise. Teams have folded, been sold, skipped town, changed leagues and pretty much come and gone more like trade shows arriving for a weekend at the local Convention Center, rather than teams setting up shop for the long haul.


The NHL got into the action in 1974 with the debut of the KC Scouts. However, KC's link to the Kings began a few years earlier when the Kings and St Louis Blues were part of the NHL's "Expansion Six" in 1967. To help support the big club, the Blues put a CHL team in KC named...the Kansas City Blues.

Several players from the Kings inaugural run in '67-68 eventually ended up skating with the KC Blues. Guys like Bob Wall, Brent Hughes, Larry Johnston (all of 4 games) and Terry Gray all played in Los Angeles during that first season only to later end up in KC.

Later Kings teams featured players that had previously done time in KC - Doug Barrie (LA '71-72), Frank St. Marseille (LA '72-77), Sheldon Kannegiesser (LA '73-77), Darryl Edestrand (LA '77-79) and another "just four games" member - Bart Crashley ('75)

Then there was Rick Lapointe, having skated in KC earlier in his career, he ended up playing nearly 100 games with the Kings between '84-86 before calling it a career.

While the expansion teams in KC and Washington were certainly news back in 1974, the biggest change came with the league restructuring into four divisions. The Kings would now play in the Smythe Division. Nearly 20 years later, the Kings would win their lone division title, before newly appointed commissioner Bettman and the NHL changed things again - this time going with the (supposed) more fan friendly Pacific division.

Random Ramble - I'm usually not in the same camp as people clamoring for the "old days" of sports. I'm not a hard core traditionalist. I will say though, one thing I sure wish they would bring back are the traditional names of the divisions. I highly doubt one more fan follows hockey today because of the divisional name changes. Hockey - and most sports in general - have such a strong sense of history, I liked it better when the Kings played in the Smythe. Thankfully, they never changed the name of the Stanley Cup.

Keeping with the fine hockey tradition of KC, those Scouts didn't last long back in the mid-seventies. They played just two seasons in KC before packing up and heading to Colorado. Long before the baseball Rockies were hitting home runs in Denver, there were the Rockies on ice. Some of the KC "magic" must have come with them, as by 1982 the moving vans were in town again. The franchise was on its way to New Jersey and well, the rest is history...with three Stanley Cups to show for their troubles.

While success for the former KC team was being achieved in Jersey, KC hockey was back on the map again in 2004. The KC Outlaws of the UHL debuted with head coach Darryl Williams. Although the ties to the Kings weren't strong, they were there - with the coach having played a whopping TWO games in Los Angeles (coincidentally during the infamous 92-93 season). During 2004-05, their only season of operation, KC finished last in the Western Conference. Sound familiar?

In a footnote that Ron Hextall could appreciate, Michel Plasse of the KC Blues was the first professional goalie to record a goal on Feb 21, 1971. However, Plasse apparently doesn't share the gift of gab with Hextall. News reports after the game quoted Plasee as saying "I wasn't trying to score, I was just clearing the puck out of our zone." Come on guy, have some flare. At least say you were aiming for the net and got lucky it went in or something.

Kansas City's link to LA continued last year when the Kings arrived in town for an exhibition game in the area's new AEG arena. It was a memorable night for a few of the young Kings - Davis Drewiske scored the first goal in the new building, wunderkind Drew Doughty made his NHL debut and Jon Quick stopped all 19 shots he faced. And the Kings won.

What type of new links will be formed tonight?

The Mayor
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photo courtesy of kcnhl.blogspot.com