Cleveland Barons

The **Cleveland Barons** were a team in the National Hockey League. They competed in the Eastern Conference. They merged with the Minnesota North Stars and are the most recent team in the four major leagues to cease operations.

The team was a relocation of the California Golden Seals franchise that had played in Oakland since 1967. After just two seasons, they merged with the Minnesota North Stars (now the Dallas Stars). As a result, the NHL operated with 17 teams during the 1978–79 NHL season.

As of 2022, the Barons remain the last franchise in the four major North American sports leagues to cease operations. Ohio did not have another NHL team until the Columbus Blue Jackets joined the league 22 years later in 2000.

## History

The Barons originated as the California Golden Seals in the 1967 NHL expansion. After new arena plans in San Francisco were cancelled, the NHL dropped its objection to a relocation of the troubled California Golden Seals franchise from Oakland.

Minority owner George Gund III persuaded majority owner Melvin 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 Cups. 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).

Cleveland had been mentioned as a possible NHL city as early as the 1930s, 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.

The Barons played in the suburban Richfield Coliseum in Richfield, Ohio, an arena originally built for the WHA’s Crusaders (who left to become the Minnesota Fighting Saints for the 1976-77 WHA season on the Barons' arrival) and the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers. At the time, the Richfield Coliseum had the largest seating capacity in the NHL, at 18,544.

The NHL approved the move to Cleveland on July 14, 1976, but details were not finalized until late August, and there was little time or money for promotion of the new team. The Barons never recovered from this lack of visibility. They never came close to filling the coliseum in their two years in Cleveland.

The team’s home opener on October 7, 1976, drew only 8,900 fans; they drew 10,000 or more fans in only 7 out of 40 home games. Attendance was worse than it had been in Oakland and the team did not even draw as many fans as the WHA's Crusaders had. The Barons were also troubled by an unfavorable lease with the coliseum.

In January of 1977, Swig hinted the team might not finish the season because of payroll difficulties. He asked the board of governors for a bailout. The board refused to believe that the Barons' situation was that dire; no NHL team had folded since 1942 and only one team had ever folded mid-season; this being during the NHL's inaugural season in 1917-18. They turned Swig's request down almost out of hand. The situation quickly deteriorated and team workers went unpaid for two months.

The bottom fell out in February when the team missed two payrolls. The league seriously considered folding the team and holding a dispersal draft for the players; by then, some of the Barons’ players were actively being courted by other teams.

By February 18, 1977, the players had lost their patience, and threatened to not take the ice for their game against the Colorado Rockies. Wanting to avoid the embarrassment of a player strike, as well as a team folding at mid-season (the latter had previously happened in the rival WHA), the league and the NHLPA made a last-minute $1.3 million loan to allow the Barons to finish the season.

After the team finished last in the Adams Division again, Swig sold his interest to Gund and his brother Gordon.

For the 1977–78 season, the Gunds poured money into the team and it seemed to make a difference at first. The Barons stunned the defending Stanley Cup champion Montreal Canadiens on November 23 before a boisterous crowd of 12,859.

After a brief slump, general manager Harry Howell pulled off several trades in an attempt to make the team tougher. It initially paid off and the Barons knocked off three of the NHL’s top teams, the Toronto Maple Leafs, New York Islanders and Buffalo Sabres in consecutive games in January of 1978.

A few weeks later, a record crowd of 13,110 saw the Barons tie the Philadelphia Flyers 2–2. It did not last; a 15-game losing streak knocked the Barons out of playoff contention.

### Merger and Aftermath

After the season, the Gunds tried to buy the coliseum, but failed. With the Barons barely registering on Cleveland's sports landscape, the Gunds searched for a way out.

Meanwhile, the Minnesota North Stars were facing financial difficulties similar to those weighing down the Barons. Fearing that two franchises were on the verge of folding, the league granted approval on June 14, 1978 for the two teams to merge.

The amalgamated team retained the North Stars' name, colors and history, and the wealthier Gunds were majority owners, and the North Stars assumed the Barons’ place in the Adams Division. They later moved to the Norris Division in the league's 1981 realignment.

In 1991, the Gunds were chosen as inaugural owners of the new San Jose Sharks expansion franchise, selling their North Stars shares to a new ownership group.

Although the NHL considers the Sharks to be a separate franchise from the Seals/Golden Seals/Barons, the league arranged a special dispersal and expansion draft in which the Sharks claimed 16 North Stars players in a dispersal draft, with both teams then allowed to choose players in an expansion draft.

The dispersal to San Jose had the effect of reversing the original Barons-North Stars merger, with the Sharks occupying the same market as the Golden Seals did prior to their move to Cleveland.

The new North Stars owners ultimately moved their team to Dallas as the Dallas Stars in 1993. The Gunds later moved an existing American Hockey League team from Lexington, Kentucky to Cleveland, operating the minor-league Cleveland Barons from 2001 to 2006.

The NHL worked to keep interest in hockey alive in Ohio. The Pittsburgh Penguins (who from 1978-1991 were owned by Northeast Ohio native Edward J. DeBartolo, Sr.) played two "home" games at the Richfield Coliseum in the early 1990s before the arena was demolished and the land added to Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

The NHL returned to Ohio in 2000 with the expansion team, Columbus Blue Jackets.

Dennis Maruk was the last Baron (and last Golden Seal player as well) to be active in the NHL, retiring from the North Stars after the 1988-89 season with 356 goals in 888 games.

## Facts

* Location: Richfield, Ohio
* Arena: Richfield Coliseum

## Players

* Michael Christie
* Richard Hampton
* Dennis Maruk
* Gilles Meloche
* Richard Shinske
* Gregory Smith