Clarence Campbell
Third NHL president; oversaw expansion and the Richard Riot.
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Clarence Sutherland Campbell was a Canadian ice hockey executive, referee, and soldier who served as the third president of the National Hockey League from 1946 to 1977. His tenure included the Richard Riot and the 1967 NHL expansion, and he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1966.
Background
Campbell refereed in the NHL during the 1930s, officiating historic games such as the 1937 contest where Howie Morenz broke his leg, and a rough playoff game between the Montreal Maroons and Boston Bruins where he called Dit Clapper a profane name and was punched. He also made a controversial call in 1939 involving Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Red Horner, leading Leafs owner Conn Smythe to call for his dismissal. After his refereeing career, league president Frank Calder groomed him as a successor, but World War II intervened.
Campbell enlisted in the Canadian Army, rose to lieutenant colonel, and was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1945. He served with the No. 1 Canadian War Graves Investigation Unit and was one of the prosecutors at trials of leading Nazis, though he denied participating in the Nuremberg Trials. After Calder's death, Red Dutton served as president until Campbell returned in 1946, at which point Dutton resigned and Campbell accepted the presidency. One of his first acts was expelling players Billy Taylor and Don Gallinger in 1948 for betting on games.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Clarence Campbell (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Word definitions: the , each quoted from its Wikipedia article.
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