Pittsburgh Yellow Jackets
The original team was part of the United States Amateur Hockey Association (USAHA) from 1920 to 1925 and developed from predecessors dating back to 1915.
After winning the USAHA Championship in 1924 and 1925, the ostensibly amateur (but arguably semi-professional) Yellow Jackets turned fully professional and became the Pittsburgh Pirates of the National Hockey League.
The roots of the Yellow Jackets trace back to the winter of 1915–16, when Roy Schooley, a local politician and former hockey referee, put together an amateur team to play exhibition games at the Duquesne Garden.
Schooley brought in Canadian players including Dinny Manners, brothers Larry and Joe McCormick, and Russell McCrimmon.
In late October, 1920, the United States Amateur Hockey Association was formed, with Schooley and William S. Haddock serving as co-founders and respectively acting as the league's secretary-treasurer and president.
[18] An original member of the USAHA, the team played only a few exhibition games in its inaugural season before suspending operations because of eligibility problems.
Sullivan noted that even though the USAHA was called an amateur league, "They didn't come down from Canada because they thought Pittsburgh was a nice place.
In February 1923, Schooley invited Lionel Conacher, a future Hall of Famer, to come to Pittsburgh and officiate games, "to see if the crowd would take to him".
After seeing how well the fans took to Conacher, Schooley made him the team's captain, and asked him to invite a number of his friends to play for the Yellow Jackets.
"[23] The Yellow Jackets were so dominant by 1924 that they spun off another Pittsburgh team, named the Fort Pitt Hornets, who played in the Eastern Division.
When Duquesne Garden president Henry Townsend was granted an NHL expansion team for the following season, he filled it with the former Yellow Jackets players.
[34] In November 1922, the Pittsburgh club switched to gold jerseys with a black "P" on the front;[35] the nickname "Yellow Jackets" appeared in the press by the next month.
[37] A late version of the Yellow Jackets jersey featured a slanted and more angular "P" logo on the front and the word "Champions" cursively written above the "P".
Shortly afterwards, Schooley headed a group that acquired the Niagara Falls franchise in the International Hockey League and transferred it to Pittsburgh under the reclaimed name "Yellow Jackets".
Before a March 1932 game against the Buffalo Bisons, Pittsburgh's Doc Romnes was recalled to Chicago to aid the team in their NHL title chase.
This and other roster moves over the season left the Yellow Jackets' coach, Charlie Reid to constantly change his forward lines.
[41] By 1932, the Yellow Jackets were having financial problems, despite the support Pittsburgh fans gave them, leaving some doubt as to whether the team would operate in 1932–33.
The news put the Yellow Jackets in limbo, since the Pirates still held territorial rights and could deny the team permission to operate.
[43] Note: GP = Games played, W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, Pts = Points, GF = Goals for, GA = Goals against In January 1935,[46] Pittsburgh theater chain owner John H. Harris, who had taken a lease on the Garden in 1932,[47] hired coach and former player Dinny Manners to put together an amateur team with the intent of placing it in the Eastern Amateur Hockey League.
First, on March 31, 1936, he hired Sonja Henie, 24-year-old Norwegian figure skater to perform before a Yellow Jackets’ game, leading to the creation of the Ice Capades.
