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Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange
That's far from a certainty. The NHL was the top professional hockey league. Rival leagues have to fight to be taken seriously.
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No, they just have to pose a legitimate threat to be taken seriously. Bill Jennings of the Rangers started encouraging the NHL to expand in the mid-60's because he was concerned losing the Los Angeles and San Francisco markets would keep the league from getting a network TV deal in the U.S. The WHL's toehold in those cities was enough to worry him. And that kicked off the process that led to the 1967 expansion (and the 1970 one, too, since Buffalo and Vancouver were rejected '67 applicants.)
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Are you sure it wasn't the other way around? The league stayed with its six cities because those were the ones where top-level professional hockey had the best chance of financially prospering?
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Yes, I'm sure. Stafford Smythe of the Leafs went to Vancouver in 1964 with the promise of an expansion team if the city would give him land for an arena. So the market was just fine if he stood to get a second NHL team in the deal. But he got turned down, and suddenly Vancouver wasn't a viable NHL city anymore. One of the Canadiens' owners wanted a team in Philadelphia in the late 40's, and the league was happy to go along with that - even letting him buy the dormant Maroons franchise - but he couldn't get an arena built, either. But if somebody wasn't part of the NHL inner circle, they weren't getting a chance - the AHL Cleveland Barons were very successful financially and outdrew a couple of NHL teams for most of the 50's, but their owners got rejected - repeatedly - when they applied to join the league.