The Cleveland Barons were a professional ice hockey team based in Richfield, Ohio. They competed in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Adams Division in the Prince of Wales Conference (1976–1978). The Barons played at Richfield Coliseum. They were a relocation of the California Golden Seals franchise that had played in Oakland since 1967. After just two seasons, the team merged with the Minnesota North Stars (now the Dallas Stars). As a result, the NHL operated with 17 teams during the 1978–79 season.
Until 2024, the Barons were the last franchise in the NHL to cease operations. Ohio did not have another NHL team until the Columbus Blue Jackets joined the league 22 years later in 2000.
Contents
History
The Barons originated as the California Golden Seals in the 1967 NHL expansion. Based at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum Arena in Oakland, California; they were the least successful of the six teams added as part of that expansion. They never had a winning record and only made the playoffs twice. Those two seasons were the only times that the franchise came close to contention.
However, the Seals' on-ice struggles were the least of their concerns. The team was sold three times, and spent much of 1974 and 1975 as wards of the league. The team never drew well; attendance was so poor that talk of relocation began as early as the inaugural season. However, the league's U.S. television contract with CBS required two teams in California. Even after the NHL and CBS parted ways, the league was reluctant to abandon a market as large as the Bay Area.
San Francisco hotel magnate Melvin Swig bought the Seals from the league in 1975 for $3.5 million. Soon afterward, he hammered out a deal with San Francisco mayor Joseph Alioto to move the Seals to a new 17,000-seat arena in San Francisco. However, when those plans fell through later in 1975, the NHL dropped its remaining objection to moving the team. Minority owner George Gund III persuaded Swig to move the team to his hometown of Cleveland for the 1976–77 season. The team was named "Barons" in honor of the successful team in the American Hockey League (AHL) that played in the city from 1929 to 1973, winning nine Calder Cup titles. The AHL Barons' owner, Nick Mileti, moved that team to Florida in favor of his Cleveland Crusaders team in the new World Hockey Association (WHA).
The Barons played at the Richfield Coliseum in suburban Richfield, Ohio, halfway between Cleveland and Akron. It had originally been built for the WHA's Crusaders (who left to become the second incarnation of the Minnesota Fighting Saints for the 1976–77 WHA season on the Barons' arrival) and the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). At the time, Richfield Coliseum had the largest seating capacity in the NHL at 18,544.
On paper, the move to Cleveland should have been a shot in the arm for the franchise. Cleveland had been mentioned as a possible NHL city as early as 1935, when the then-struggling Montreal Canadiens considered moving there. It had also been turned down for an NHL expansion team on three previous occasions, in the 1950s and 1960s. While the Seals were relatively isolated in California (their nearest opponents were the Los Angeles Kings and Vancouver Canucks), the Barons would have been within close proximity to the Pittsburgh Penguins (themselves struggling and even filing for bankruptcy in 1975), Buffalo Sabres and Detroit Red Wings, helping them form rivalries with those teams much like the longstanding rivalry between the Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers and, to a lesser extent at the time, the college football rivalry between Ohio State and Michigan. Additionally, the Barons (and their previous incarnations, the Indians and Falcons) had been one of the pillars of the AHL and its predecessors for 44 years.
Merger and aftermath
The Gunds aggressively marketed the team, but got little to show for it. The Barons only attracted a total of 7,000 fans during their three-game winning streak in January 1978. They were also unable to get favorable deals for radio or television, denying them another potential revenue stream; getting nearby NHL teams like the Penguins (then invisible on the Pittsburgh sports scene compared to the dynastic Steelers and nearly equally successful Pittsburgh Pirates), Red Wings (during the height of the "Dead Wings" era), and Sabres (the only contending team of the three during this time) for home dates also did not lead to attendance bumps. After the season, the Gunds tried to buy the Coliseum, but failed (they later succeeded in buying the Coliseum, and eventually bought the Cavaliers from Ted Stepien in 1983). Also affecting the team – though completely out of their control – was the local economy, as the steel crisis hit the Rust Belt in general and specifically Northeast Ohio hard, especially in nearby Youngstown, who was hit with its now-infamous Black Monday on September 19, 1977, that saw 5,000 steel workers from Youngstown Sheet and Tube laid off almost instantly a whole decade before the WARN Act went into effect, leading to a ripple effect in other Rust Belt cities that would last well into the 1980s.
With the Barons barely registering on Cleveland's sports landscape, the Gunds reluctantly decided to write them off as a lost cause and search for a way out. Years later, Gordon Gund recalled that the decision to disband the team was especially painful given his family's roots in Cleveland. Kenneth Schnitzer, owner of the WHA's Houston Aeros (who were not being included as part of any proposed merger between the two leagues at the time), offered to buy the Barons and relocate them to Houston, but nothing came of it.
Meanwhile, the Minnesota North Stars were also having financial difficulties similar to those faced by the Barons, but unlike the Gunds their owners lacked the resources to absorb the losses. The Gunds began talks with the North Stars and broached the possibility of merging both teams. The league was initially cool to the idea, but ultimately concluded that it would be far better for its image to announce a transaction that could be called a "merger" than risk two teams folding. The league granted final approval for the merger on June 14, 1978. The amalgamated team retained the North Stars' name, colors, and history, with the wealthier Gunds as majority owners. The Barons are the last team to fold in the NHL.
Season-by-season record
Note: GP = Games played, W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, Pts = Points, GF = Goals for, GA = Goals against, PIM = Penalty minutes
Broadcasters
In their two years in Cleveland, Larry Hirsch served as the Barons' radio play-by-play announcer on WJW. On the television side, WUAB channel 43 did a very limited schedule with Steve Albert and Dick Hammer on commentary in 1976–77, and perhaps only one game in 1977–78 with Charlie Steiner and Pete Franklin on commentary.
Notable players
Team captains
Jim Neilson and Bob Stewart, 1976–1978 (co-captains)
First-round draft picks
1977: Mike Crombeen (fifth overall)
NHL All-Star Game selections
Al MacAdam: 1976–77
Dennis Maruk: 1977–78
Head coach
Jack Evans, 1976–1978
General managers
Bill McCreary, 1976–1977
Harry Howell, 1977–1978