Clarence Campbell

Clarence S. Campbell (born July 9, 1905 in Fleming , Saskatchewan , † June 24, 1984 ) was a Canadian sports official and from 1946 to 1977 the third president of the National Hockey League .

Career

Clarence Campbell with the Stanley Cup in 1957

He successfully completed his law studies at the University of Alberta in 1926 and earned a scholarship to Oxford University . In the six years that he spent in England , he was active as a referee in both ice hockey and lacrosse .

After his return to Canada, the country found itself in an economic crisis . He took a job with a law firm in Edmonton and was also an arbitrator with the CAHA . Here he fell on the NHL officials by good performance and was committed at the beginning of the 1936/37 season . In his first season he directed the game in which Howie Morenz was seriously injured and later succumbed to the injuries. Thanks to good performance, he was also nominated to lead a semi-final game between the Detroit Red Wings and the Montréal Canadiens .

From 1940 he was in service with the Canadian Army. He started his military career at the bottom, and made it to the command of a division by the end of the war. In 1946 he was the prosecutor in the trial against Major General of the Waffen SS, Kurt Meyer . He was awarded the Order of the British Empire .

On his return to North America he was offered a position as assistant to NHL President Red Dutton . When Dutton resigned a few months later, he proposed Campbell as his successor, and those in charge agreed.

In the first years in office he increased the number of games per team from 50 to 70, from the 1947/48 season he regularly introduced the NHL All-Star Game and as one of his most important acts he organized a retirement plan for the players of the NHL . In order to create more balance in the league and to strengthen the weaker teams in the 1950s, in Boston and Chicago, he introduced a draft within the league, as richer teams like Montreal and Toronto hoarded strong young talent. In the mid-1960s, he realized that the league needed to grow in order to remain competitive. For this purpose, the league was expanded from six to twelve teams for the 1967/68 season and the expansion to 18 teams by 1975. As a result, the NHL managed to stand up to the competition emerging from the World Hockey Association in 1972 . Campbell also prohibited players who were not under contract with an NHL team from participating in the 1972 Summit Series . The most prominent victim of this was Bobby Hull .

By the time Campbell resigned in 1977, he had already received a number of honors from the NHL. The Campbell Conference was named after him, the winner of which was the Clarence S. Campbell Bowl .

In 1966 he was honored with the induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame . In 1972 he received the Lester Patrick Trophy .

Web links

• Clarence Campbell in the database of the Hockey Hall of Fame (English)