Minnesota Fighting Saints

World Hockey Association (1972-1977)

Background

The story of the Minnesota Fighting Saints starts with a simple premise: If the local pro hockey team isn’t winning, start your own. That’s what Minnesota scrap metal business owner Louis Kaplan did in the fall of 1971. A Minnesota North Stars season ticket holder from the team’s inception in 1967, Kaplan soon grew frustrated with the NHL team.

“I became disenchanted after the first year,” he told the Associated Press in 1971. “And I never renewed my tickets…I got tired of them just throwing the puck into the corner and scrambling around after it.”

World War

Kaplan established Midwest Saints Inc. and applied for a franchise in a new league called the World Hockey Association (WHA). The franchise was announced on November 1, 1971, along with nine other teams. Two more were added a few weeks later to round out the circuit to 12. 

The North Stars played in suburban Bloomington at The Met, while the new WHA team planned to start off in the old St. Paul Auditorium before moving to the new St. Paul Civic Center as soon as construction was completed on that venue. The team was named the Minnesota Fighting Saints, after St. Paul’s previous hockey team, the St. Paul Saints of the International Hockey League (IHL).

Our Favorite Stuff

Order at Royal Retros

Minnesota Fighting Saints WHA
Logo T-Shirt

Trivia: The World Hockey Association’s Minnesota Fighting Saints identity was a tribute to the informal nickname of minor league St. Paul Saints (1959-1963) of the International Hockey League. The “Little Saint” logo made its debut in January 1973 on newly re-designed jerseys timed to coincide with the opening of the brand new St. Paul Civic Center. 

 

The IHL Saints were nicknamed and sometimes marketed as the Fighting Saints. They played their first game in 1959. In 1963, they changed their name to the Rangers after becoming an affiliate of New York’s NHL team. They left for Omaha in 1966.

Building the team

Like fellow WHA squad, the New England Whalers, the Fighting Saints preferred signing local players. As a publicity stunt, the team drafted Wendell Anderson with their final pick. He was a former University of Minnesota star and a member of the 1956 U.S. Olympic hockey team. When he was drafted by the Fighting Saints, he was serving as governor of Minnesota.

On the ice, the Fighting Saints were quite successful. They made the playoffs in each of their three complete seasons. However, they never made it out of the second round. The North Stars, meanwhile, were in pretty much the same shape before beginning a three-year playoff drought in 1974. A year after the Fighting Saints debuted, the University of Minnesota played in three straight Frozen Four championships, winning two. 

Competition for fans was fierce, to be sure. The North Stars were doing a great business in the Met, drawing 15,000 fans a game. The Fighting Saints drew just over 5,800 fans a game during their inaugural campaign, a figure that steadily increased in successive seasons. 

Minnesota Fighting Saints  vs. North Stars Attendance

LR1=Lost in Round 1, LR2=Lost in Round 2, OOP=Out of Playoffs

Famous Saints

The Fighting Saints roster featured several notable players, including Jeff Carlson (for seven games), Steve Carlson (who played for both incarnations of the team), and David Hanson. The three played the Hanson Brothers in the 1977 film Slap Shot. The latter two played several seasons in the WHA.

Another top star to play for the Fighting Saints was Wayne Connelly, the all-time scoring leader for the team with 283 points in 291 games. Mike Antonovich was the team’s career games leader with 309 total. Also skating for the Fighting Saints were Rick Smith, WHA Hall of Famer Dave Keon, and multiple Halls of Fame inductee (Hockey, Ontario, Canada’s Sports) Dave Keon. Mike Curran, a member of the 1972 U.S. Olympic hockey team, was between the pipes. Curran was inducted into the International Ice Hockey Federation Hall of Fame and the United States Hockey Hall of Fame. John Garrett, of Hockey Night in Canada fame, also spent time minding the net for the Fighting Saints.

New ownership

In 1974, the team was sold to a group headed by Wayne Belisle. At first, the Twin Cities-based attorney put together a Los Angeles-based group that included singer Andy Williams and orchestra leader Henry Mancini. They, however, opted to let a Minnesota-based syndicate acquire the team instead. It was reported that the new owners were ready to sink as much as $5 million into the team over a three-year period. 

At first, they were quite serious, allowing Belisle and GM Glen Sonmor to pursue Boston Bruins legend Bobby Orr in the summer of 1975.⁷Orr May Be Saint for $6.5-Million, AP, via the St. Petersburg Independent, July 15, 1975 The effort continued into December, but Orr stayed in Bean Town. It was around that time Belisle and his partners had had enough and began trying to unload the team, preferably to fellow Minnesotans. When word got out that the Fighting Saints were for sale, Mayor Lawrence Cohen floated the idea of the city of St. Paul buying the team. That never came to fruition.

In February of 1976, Belisle brokered a deal with a group that included former Saints president John Finley, Frank Martzitelli, a former Minnesota highway commissioner, real estate developer Pete Parranto, and, perhaps ominously, mortician named Patrick O’Halloran. They ponied up $130,000 and took over the team. A few weeks later, they asked for Belisle’s help in running the franchise, which was quickly burning through money. The players played two games without being paid, but it was like holding back the ocean with a broom. The club folded on February 28, 1976. That would have been the end of the WHA in the Twin Cities if not for the misfortunes of the NHL’s California Golden Seals. 

The Cleveland connection

The Golden Seals were looking for greener pastures, as it were, and set their sights on Cleveland, which at the time was home to the WHA’s Crusaders, a team that also was not in great financial shape. Nick Mileti, the Crusaders’ owner, was trying to sell the team. He had a deal to sell the club to Bill Putnam, who planned to move the Crusaders to Miami and call them the Florida Breakers.

As soon as word got out about that deal, the Golden Seals sought and were granted approval from the NHL to move to Northeast Ohio. When Putnam was unable to obtain a lease for the Sportsatorium in Hollywood, a Miami suburb, the Crusaders’ move was off. The Golden Seals, however, were already on their way. Mileti, instead, moved his team to St. Paul to become the “new” Fighting Saints.

The new incarnation of the team kept the logo from the original club but changed the colors from blue and gold to red and gold. On the ice, the team continued the winning ways of their predecessors, but attendance was dipped. Also, Milei desperately wanted to be out of the hockey business. Unable to find local buyers for the team, he folded the club on January 20, 1977. 

GM Glen Sanmor went on local TV and delivered a eulogy of sorts. “I am not one to ever admit this,” he stated. “But I guess I’d have to say now what a lot of people have said for a long time— that this area is not big enough to support two hockey teams.”⁸Pro Hockey Dies Again In Minnesota, AP via the Ocala Star-Banner, Ocala, FL, Jan. 21, 1977

Officially, the (new) Fighting Saints franchise was still active, if only on paper. That led Putnam to once again attempt to acquire the team, or the remnants thereof, and move it to Miami. The league declined Putnam’s offer and officially suspended the franchise on March 8, 1977.⁹Down but not out Putnam’s answer, AP, via The Gazette, Montreal, QC, Mar., 10, 1977

Ironically, the team that drove the Crusaders out of Cleveland and to St. Paul, would end up in Minnesota as well. After two rough years in Ohio, the Cleveland Barons, the former California Golden Seals, merged with the almost-as-destitute Minnesota North Stars, with the combined club keeping the latter’s name and home.

Minnesota Fighting Saints Shop

Our Favorite Gear

Shop at Royal Retros!

Minnesota Fighting Saints
Replica Jersey

When it comes to Replica Jerseys, we turn to our friends at Royal Retros, who put extraordinary detail into their fully customizable hockey sweaters.

• Free Customization Included

• Each jersey individually handmade

• Any name and number

• Sewn tackle twill crest, numbers & letters

• 100% polyester

• Heavyweight fabric made to game standards

• Fight strap included

When you make a purchase through an affiliate link like this one, Fun While It Lasted earns a commission at no additional cost to you. Thanks for your support!

Editor's Pick

Order Now from Amazon

The Rebel League

The Short and Unruly Life of the World Hockey Association

By Ed Willes

 

The Rebel League celebrates the good, the bad, and the ugly of the fabled WHA. It is filled with hilarious anecdotes, behind the scenes dealing, and simply great hockey. The upstart WHA introduced to the world 27 new hockey franchises, a trail of bounced cheques, fractious lawsuits, and folded teams. It introduced the crackpots, goons, and crazies that are so well remembered as the league’s bizarre legacy.

But the hit-and-miss league was much more than a travelling circus of the weird and wonderful. It was the vanguard that drove hockey into the modern age. It ended the NHL’s monopoly, freed players from the reserve clause, ushered in the 18-year-old draft, moved the game into the Sun Belt, and put European players on the ice in numbers previously unimagined..

When you make a purchase through an affiliate link like this one, Fun While It Lasted earns a commission at no additional cost to you. Thanks for your support!

Minnesota Fighting Saints Video

1972-73 Your A Saint or You Ain’t (sic) team highlight video.

Links

World Hockey Association Media Guides

World Hockey Association Programs

###