St. Louis's Other NHL Team

The St. Louis Blues, NHL hockey team since 1967, has been a staple of St. Louis sports. But did you know that the Blues weren't the first NHL team in St. Louis?

St. Louis Eagles member Ralph Bowman

To find the first NHL team in St. Louis's history, you have to go way back before the beginning of the NHL. You'd have to begin the story in 1883 in Ottawa, Canada. NHL fans would know of the Ottawa Senators, and indeed an Ottawa Senator team began in 1883. The team began as an amateur team and didn't become a professional team until 1907. The NHL formed in 1917 with four Canadian teams in Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec. Ottawa was the smallest of the four: the second smallest was Toronto which was 80% larger than Ottawa. The Ottawa Senators did well after the beginning of the NHL, winning the Stanley Cup 4 times in the first decade of existence.

By 1924, the NHL decided to expand the NHL into America. A new team from Montreal was formed in 1924, as well as a team in Boston. In 1925, a New York team was added as well as a team in Pittsburgh. In 1926, another New York team formed. In 1927, Chicago and Detroit got teams. Meanwhile, Ottawa's fan base was shrinking. Play against American teams wasn't as popular as play against Canadian teams. Attendance began dropping off for Ottawa. That same year, Ottawa won its last Stanley Cup, but managed to lose about $50,000. The leak of money couldn't be stopped.

The Ottawa Senators didn't play the 1931-32 season; they asked the NHL for permission to suspend operations in order to save money. In the meantime, they leased out players, and they received a loan to continue operating. They returned for the 1932-33 season, but finished in last place, and finished last in the 1933-34 season also. It was decided that Senators had to move to a larger city in order for the debts to be payed off. In the 1931 census, Ottawa only was listed as having 110,000 people. At the time, St. Louis was the 7th largest American city with a population of over 820,000, so it was decided the Ottawa Senators would move.

In 1932, St. Louis had asked for an NHL team, but the league denied the request, saying that travel to the Midwest while the depression was going on was too costly. But after the money problems of the Senators, the deal looked like a life-saver for one of the original NHL teams, so it was granted. When the team moved, the company owners changed hands, and the team was renamed "the Eagles" after the logo for Anheuser-Busch. There was already a hockey team in St. Louis at the time (the St. Louis Flyers) which belonged to the  AHA (American Hockey Association), which threatened to sue the new Eagles, but the lawsuit never went through.

The St. Louis Eagles played their first season in 1934-35. They played in the St. Louis Arena (later home to the Blues). At the time, there were two hockey divisions in the NHL: American and Canadian. The Eagles remained a part of the Canadian division, which didn't help with the far road games. They finished last in the division, while scoring the least amount of goals, and allowing the 2nd most goals. The team lost $70,000 that year. They sold off a number of decent players, but they couldn't break even. They looked into moving the team some place else, Cleveland being one and a return to Ottawa being another. The team petitioned the NHL to once again suspend operations to stop the money leak, but the NHL declined. The NHL purchased the team for $40,000 (after no buyers were found) and dispersed the players through a special draft. In 1938, the second Montreal team (the Montreal Maroons) tried to move to St. Louis, but the NHL blocked the move, citing the travel cost problems that happened to the Eagles.

St. Louis Eagles logo

An NHL team didn't come back to St. Louis until 1967 when the major series of expansions doubled the number of teams from 6 to 12. Named after the W.C. Handy song "Saint Louis Blues", the Blues have been a sports member of the area ever since. Although memories of the Eagles have faded, the name of the Ottawa Senators lived on. Ottawa retained the rights to the name and logo of the Senators, but didn't get another NHL Senators team until the 1992-93 season. The team has done well: playoff appearances in 12 of its first 14 years, 4 division titles, President's Trophy in 2003, and a Stanley Cup appearance in 2007. In 2011, the Senators were valued at $201 million. The team name has come a long way from back in the 1930's when it was losing money year after year.