On This Date: 100 Years Ago Today, the NHL Let Chicago and Detroit In (Sept. 25, 1926)

On Sept. 25, 1926, at the NHL's annual meeting in Montreal, the league's governors made it official. Chicago was in. Detroit was in. So were the New York Rangers, owned by Madison Square Garden.

The league went from 7 teams to 10 in one meeting: 2 in New York, 2 in Montreal, and one each in Boston, Toronto, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Detroit. Chicago and Detroit would go on to win 17 Stanley Cups between them. And all 3 of the new teams would end up in the most famous group in hockey: the Original Six.

Here's how Chicago and Detroit got started, and where every Original Six team really came from.

Why the NHL suddenly had players to spare

The NHL bought an entire league's worth of players for $258,000.

In 1926 there were still 2 major pro leagues in hockey. The NHL ran in the East. The Western Hockey League ran in Canada's prairie and Pacific cities, and its teams had won the Stanley Cup as recently as 1925.

The WHL couldn't compete with the money in America's big arenas, and in May 1926 it folded. Frank Patrick sold every player contract in the league to the NHL. Whole rosters moved east. A defenseman named Eddie Shore went to Boston. Portland's team went to Chicago. Victoria's went to Detroit.

That's how 2 brand-new franchises showed up in 1926 with real players already on them.

The Chicago Black Hawks

First game: Nov. 17, 1926. Black Hawks 4, Toronto St. Patricks 1.

The Chicago franchise belonged to Maj. Frederic McLaughlin, a coffee businessman who had served in World War I. He named the team after his Army division, which called itself the Blackhawk Division after the Sauk leader Black Hawk.

McLaughlin bought the Portland Rosebuds' roster from the WHL and played his first season at the Chicago Coliseum, which held about 6,000 for hockey. His team won its first game, 4-1, over Toronto.

For its first 60 years, the name was 2 words: Black Hawks. In 1986 the team switched to one word, Blackhawks, to match the spelling in its original franchise papers.

The Detroit Cougars

First game: Nov. 18, 1926. Boston 2, Detroit 0. Played in Canada.

Detroit's franchise went to a group of local businessmen led by John Townsend and Wesson Seyburn. They bought the roster of the Victoria Cougars, who had won the Stanley Cup in 1925, and kept the name. Detroit's first NHL team was the Cougars.

There was one problem. Detroit's new arena, the Olympia, wasn't built yet. The AP story on the meeting already warned that if it wasn't ready, Detroit would play its home games in Windsor, Ont. It wasn't ready. So the Cougars played their entire first season across the river in Windsor, Ontario, at the Border Cities Arena. Their first game was a 2-0 loss to the Bruins in front of about 6,000 fans.

The Olympia opened for the 1927-28 season. The team became the Falcons in 1930. In 1932 a grain millionaire named James Norris bought it and renamed it the Red Wings. Norris had played for a Montreal club called the Winged Wheelers, and he gave his new team a winged wheel for the Motor City.

Who are the Original Six?

6 teams. 25 seasons. No one else allowed in.

From 1942 to 1967, the NHL had exactly 6 teams. It's the era of Rocket Richard, Gordie Howe and Bobby Hull, when teams saw each other so often (14 times a season by the 1950s) that everyone hated everyone. Here's when each one really started.

Montreal Canadiens: 1909. The Canadiens are older than the NHL. They started in the National Hockey Association in 1909 and were a founding member when the NHL formed in 1917.

Toronto Maple Leafs: 1917. A founding member, but not under that name. Toronto's team had no official nickname in the first season, became the Arenas in 1918 and the St. Patricks in 1919. Conn Smythe's group bought the club on Feb. 14, 1927 and renamed it the Maple Leafs.

Boston Bruins: 1924. The first American team in the NHL. Grocery magnate Charles Adams owned it, and it won its first game, 2-1 over the Montreal Maroons, on Dec. 1, 1924.

New York Rangers: 1926. Formally added at the same Sept. 25, 1926 meeting as Chicago and Detroit. The Rangers beat the Maroons 1-0 in their first game on Nov. 16, 1926, one night before Chicago's debut.

Chicago Black Hawks: 1926. See above.

Detroit Red Wings: 1926. As the Cougars. See above.

The Original Six weren't the original 6

Only 2 of them played in the NHL's first season.

The NHL's first season, 1917-18, had 4 teams: the Montreal Canadiens, the Montreal Wanderers, the Ottawa Senators and Toronto. The Wanderers' arena burned down on Jan. 2, 1918, and the team folded.

So of the "Original" Six, only Montreal and Toronto were there at the start. Boston, New York, Chicago and Detroit were expansion teams. The name comes from the 25 years they had the league to themselves, after the Brooklyn Americans shut down in 1942.

That ended in 1967, when the NHL doubled to 12 teams overnight: the Los Angeles Kings, Minnesota North Stars, Oakland Seals, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins and St. Louis Blues.

100 years later

Both teams are making a season of it. The Blackhawks will play Toronto on Nov. 17, 2026 at the United Center, 100 years to the day after their first game. The Red Wings will play Boston on Nov. 18, 2026, a rematch of the game they lost in Windsor a century earlier.

Chicago has 6 Stanley Cups. Detroit has 11, the most of any American team. Not bad for 2 franchises that started with another league's leftover players and, in Detroit's case, a home rink in another country.

Which Original Six team is yours? Tell us in the comments.