The St. Louis Eagles played one season of NHL hockey. Then the league bought the team, dissolved it, and auctioned its players to the other franchises.
It is the only time in NHL history that a franchise was purchased and liquidated by the league itself.
The Ottawa Problem
The Eagles were the Ottawa Senators, and the Senators were in serious trouble.
Ottawa was one of the NHL's founding franchises and one of its most successful, having won four Stanley Cups between 1920 and 1927. But Ottawa was also the smallest market in the league by a wide margin, with a population of roughly 125,000 in the early 1930s competing against Montreal, Toronto, New York, Boston, Chicago, and Detroit.
The Great Depression finished what the market size started. The Senators suspended operations for the 1931-32 season, returned for two more years, and by 1934 were financially unsustainable. Ownership sold the franchise to a St. Louis group for $40,000.
One Season in St. Louis
The Eagles began play in the 1934-35 season at the St. Louis Arena, a large building that had opened in 1929 and seated about 12,000.
The problems started immediately and had nothing to do with the roster.
**Travel destroyed them.** St. Louis was hundreds of miles from every other NHL city. In 1934 that meant long, exhausting train trips with no rest days built into the schedule. The Eagles played road games in a state of chronic fatigue, and the league refused to adjust the schedule to accommodate them.
**The league charged them for it.** The NHL actually assessed the Eagles additional travel fees to compensate other teams for the longer trips to St. Louis. The franchise was being financially penalized for existing where it existed.
**St. Louis was not ready.** The city had a strong amateur and minor league hockey tradition, but the NHL product at Depression-era prices was a hard sell.
The team finished 11-31-6, last in the American Division. They were outscored 144 to 86.
Syd Howe and the Sell-Off
The Eagles had one genuine star: Syd Howe, a versatile forward who would go on to a Hall of Fame career and win three Stanley Cups with Detroit.
When the season ended, the Eagles ownership tried to sell the franchise. There were no buyers. The team asked to suspend operations. The NHL declined and instead did something unprecedented: the league itself purchased the franchise for $40,000, then dissolved it and held a dispersal draft, selling the players to the remaining eight teams.
Syd Howe went to Detroit for $50,000, which meant the NHL made money on the transaction. He immediately became a key contributor to a Red Wings team that won the Stanley Cup in 1936 and 1937.
The St. Louis Eagles ceased to exist in the summer of 1935, after 48 games.
The Legacy
**They ended the Ottawa Senators' original run.** The Senators name would not return to the NHL until 1992, 57 years later. The original franchise, with its four Stanley Cups, died in St. Louis.
**They proved the NHL had a geography problem.** The Eagles' failure was largely a travel and scheduling failure. The league learned that you cannot place a franchise in isolation without adjusting the structure around it. That lesson shaped NHL expansion planning for decades.
**They are the only franchise the NHL bought and killed.** No other team in league history has been purchased by the league and deliberately liquidated. The Eagles are unique in that grim distinction.
**St. Louis got a second chance.** The Blues arrived in 1967 and won the Stanley Cup in 2019. The city that could not sustain a team for one season eventually became a genuine hockey market.
One season. Forty-eight games. And a franchise that traced back to 1883 ended in a dispersal draft.
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St. Louis Eagles 1934-1935 | The NHL Killed Them | Hockey Tee – Odd Man Rush