Philadelphia Quakers (NHL)

The Philadelphia Quakers were a professional ice hockey team that competed in the National Hockey League for just one full season, 1930–31, playing home games at the Philadelphia Arena. The franchise was the successor to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The Pirates had been the third American team to join the NHL, showing early promise by reaching the playoffs in two of their first three seasons. But the team soon struggled both on the ice and at the gate. A sale to bootlegger Bill Dwyer failed to turn things around.

After the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression, the owners were forced to sell off star players to stay afloat. By the end of the 1929–30 season, the team was $400,000 in debt. Their arena, the Duquesne Garden, built in 1890 and nearing the end of its useful life, seated only 5,000 (with standing room for 8,000), making it the smallest in the league.

Boxing promoter Benny Leonard, acting as Dwyer’s front man, requested a temporary move to Philadelphia. The team was renamed the Quakers, after the historic Quaker community that founded Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, with the plan to return to Pittsburgh once a new arena was built.

Things did not improve on the other side of Pennsylvania. Financial troubles continued. On the ice, the Quakers were hopeless. They needed three games to score their first goal and three more to get their first win, a 2–1 victory over the visiting Toronto Maple Leafs on November 25, 1930.

They finished with a dreadful 4–36–4 record. Their .136 winning percentage was the lowest in NHL history, a mark that stood for 45 years until the Washington Capitals posted a .131 percentage in 1974–75. Their four wins tied the 1919–20 Quebec Bulldogs for the fewest by a team playing a full season. They had the worst offense (76 goals for) and worst defense (184 goals against) in the league.

At the end of the 1930–31 season, the Quakers and the Ottawa Senators both announced they would not field a team for the 1931–32 season. Philadelphia would not have an NHL team again until the Flyers arrived in 1967. The Flyers adopted the Quakers’ orange and black colors, though ironically they were inspired by the Texas Longhorns.

While the Senators returned for two more years before moving to St. Louis, the Quakers franchise never played again.