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Edmonton Oilers founder and hockey legend Bill Hunter dead at 82

BOB WEBER : Canadian Press

EDMONTON (CP) - Hockey fans from Regina to Russia knew him as "Wild Bill," the man who founded the Edmonton Oilers, took on the NHL with a rival league and nearly brought the pro game to his home town of Saskatoon. William Dickenson Hunter, who died in an Edmonton hospital Monday at age 82, never liked the nickname bestowed in 1949 after a particularly vociferous disagreement with a referee.

But somehow the moniker seemed to fit many areas of his life - not just his coaching style.

During his 65 years as a coach, owner, promoter and holder of innumerable press conferences, Hunter changed the landscape of hockey not once, but twice. And he didn't do that by being sedate.

"If to be passionate and emotional looks wild to some people, so be it," he wrote in his autobiography Wild Bill.

"If that's what Wild Bill means, it's a compliment and I hope the name always remains appropriate."

Family friend Lyle Best said Hunter will be remembered for his unflagging perseverance against the odds.

"His indominatable spirit will be a rallying cry for all people involved in professional sports, especially in small towns."

Hunter was born in Saskatoon and started his first team while still in high school. He organized, funded and drafted a junior football team that evolved into today's Saskatoon Hilltops.

His schooling was completed at Notre Dame College in Wilcox, Sask., a renowned Prairie institution of scholarship and athletics. Hunter always credited the school's founder, Pere Athol Murray, with being one of the most important influences on his life.

When he wasn't in class or listening raptly to Murray expound on self-reliance and the pursuit of excellence, Hunter was managing the college's sports teams. One summer, on a whim, he took the Hounds baseball team on a 78-game tour of the Prairies, living off tournament winnings and eating baloney sandwiches by the side of the road.

Hunter spent the Second World War in England where he flew Beauforts, Spitfires and Hurricanes for the RAF's International Squadron. Upon his return to Saskatchewan, he wholesaled groceries and set up a sporting goods store.

But by 1946 he was back in hockey.

Over the next 25 years, Hunter was to own, manage or coach - often all three - minor-league teams in Saskatoon, Regina, Medicine Hat, Moose Jaw, Yorkton and Edmonton.

In 1966, he was among a group of western hockey owners who changed the way the game was structured when they formed what is now the Western Hockey League.

For a while it was known as The Outlaw League. But it eventually became too big to ignore and is now one of the largest junior leagues in the world.

Despite taking the Edmonton Oil Kings twice to the Memorial Cup - bringing it back in 1966 - Hunter wanted into the big leagues. Stymied in an effort to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins and denied an expansion team by the NHL, he began looking elsewhere.

When an old associate called him in July 1971 and told him about two American promoters interested in a new pro hockey league, Hunter was ready to listen.

Hunter, Gary Davidson and Dennis Murphy eventually started the World Hockey Association, an eight-year circus of musical owners, wild travel schedules and sometimes thrilling hockey, including a 1974 series with the Soviets.

The WHA gave Hunter his first pro team, the Edmonton Oilers, who eventually became one of four teams accepted into the NHL. That team, with a bunch of kids named Gretzky, Messier and Kurri, rewrote the record book during the 1980s and is the only one of the four teams still playing in the league.

The WHA, however, changed pro hockey forever.

It broke the NHL's much-hated reserve clause, which bound players to their team and destroyed their bargaining power. It gave hockey its first million-dollar contract when Bobby Hull jumped to the Winnipeg Jets. And it brought hockey to new markets that learned to love the game.

Hunter had sold the Oilers by the time they entered the NHL, but he still wanted into the league. In 1983, he heard the St. Louis Blues were for sale and he pounced. Saskatoon, his old home town, would be their new home.

"This would be my greatest challenge. This would be my legacy," he wrote.

Weeks of secret talks alternated with razzle-dazzle sales trips as Hunter negotiated the deal, raised money for a stadium and taught the people of Saskatchewan to dream. Eventually, he closed the sale, built the stadium and sold more tickets than he had seats.

But the NHL, unconvinced such a small market was viable and unwilling to move a U.S. franchise north, said no.

"I was braced for it, even half expecting it," he wrote. "Still, I was unprepared for the weight that tiny syllable would drop on my shoulders."

Best said Hunter talked about that time in Saskatoon as recently as Saturday.

"He was still upset at the NHL board of governors for voting it down," Best said. "Bill always bounced back, but that one really stuck in his craw."

The Blues were Hunter's hockey swan song. He turned to curling where he energized the game with big money prizes and all-star lineups.

His last years were spent in Edmonton with family and friends. Hunter was married four times. The first two marriages ended in divorce, the third when his wife was killed in a car accident the day after their first anniversary. He is survived by his fourth wife Vi Hunter to whom he was married for 30 years.

Hunter is a member of both the Order of Canada and the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame.

Sportswriters fondly called him the king of hyperbole and still tell stories of how he once called a press conference to announce a really big press conference the next day. But they always listened to him, knowing that whatever dream he was selling, Wild Bill might just pull it off.

Hunter was diagnosed with inoperable bone cancer in 1999, although his blue eyes remained piercing, his smile illuminating and his spirit undiminished to the end. He might have penned his own epitaph when he closed his book thus:

"To this day I keep looking ahead, confident that great things are in store."

Hunter, who planned much of his funeral, will be buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Edmonton on Friday after a service at St. Joseph's Basilica.

© Copyright 2002 The Canadian Press

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A sad day sports fans

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"Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd." R A Wilson (R.I.P)

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