Double the Fun

Baseball did it. So did pro football and pro basketball. The wonder is that it took hockey so long. In comparative terms, hockey has long been the most popular and profitable of all pro sports.

There has not been an empty seat at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens for 20 years, and the Boston Bruins, who have finished last in the National Hockey League for five straight years, regularly outdraw the Boston Celtics, who have won seven straight National Basketball Association championships. So the N.H.L. decided last week to expand from six to twelve teams, granting new franchises to Los Angeles, St. Louis, San Francisco-Oakland, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Some of the new owners already have interests in other sports: the Pittsburgh franchise goes to a syndicate that includes Jerry Wolman, owner of pro football's Philadelphia Eagles, and the Los Angeles franchise was won by Jack Kent Cooke, who also owns pro basket ball's Los Angeles Lakers. For the privilege of playing in their league, each of the new owners must pay $2,000,000 to the old owners. And there are certain incidental expenses. Take the case of St. Louis, where the only ice arena in town belongs to James D. Norris, the onetime boxing monopolist, who also happens to own the N.H.L.'s Chicago Black Hawks. Whoever buys the St.

Louis franchise (one prospective pur chaser: Stan Musial) will also have to buy the arena, at Jim Norris' price.

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