Cowtown: Once a hockey town

Once, Texans cheered for Red Wings.

For seven years at the height of baby boomer youth, the Detroit Red Wings were the toast of Fort Worth, and Hall of Fame names such as Gordie Howe and Frank Mahovlich skated in Will Rogers Coliseum.

Like the original Cats baseball team, the local Fort Worth Wings of the 1960s seem almost mythical now, more like a nickel-beer-night hallucination than a memory.

But the memory remains strong for the player with maybe the greatest name in hockey history: Bart Crashley.

"It was the biggest thing in Texas besides the Cowboys and college football," Crashley, 61, remembered Friday, driving in his native Ontario.

Long before the Stars came to town, the Wings and farm-league counterpart Dallas Black Hawks drew brawling crowds of 10,000 to what is now the Fort Worth Convention Center.

Imagine a rivalry like Texas-Oklahoma football, except stoked by fights and free-flowing Miller beer.

Players sent down from pro hockey rivals Detroit and Chicago landed 30 miles apart in Texas, trying to scrap their way back to the big league while fans fought out the intercity feud.

Crashley saw both cities. He arrived with the Wings in 1967, then played in Dallas and back with a later team, the Fort Worth Texans.

In 1967, Crashley remembered, "Dallas was booming. It was all nouveau, all about nightclubs and restaurants."

The Cowboys were on their way to making history in the Ice Bowl, and fans took to hockey more than that other new sport, pro basketball. The Dallas Chaparrals eventually gave up, moved to San Antonio and took the name Spurs.

Fort Worth had college football and rodeo in an arena that back in 1941 had hosted the first pro hockey game in Texas.

"Fort Worth was slower-paced," Crashley said. "It was all about those Cowtown roots."

He wouldn't say which city he preferred. But over six seasons in the National Hockey League, he played more in Fort Worth and has come back for friends' funerals.

"Dallas was a lot of fun for a young guy," he said, but Fort Worth was more relaxed.

"You really got to know people in Fort Worth personally," he said. "They made a big fuss over the Wings. We weren't up against the Cowboys."

Hockey rekindled a city sports rivalry that had faded with the last baseball matchup in 1958.

The Wings and Black Hawks drew crowds of 6,000 and 7,000 in Fort Worth and in State Fair Coliseum in Dallas, then packed the brand-new convention center in Fort Worth.

Somehow, players from towns named Moose Jaw or Thunder Bay picked up on the tension between Dallas and Fort Worth.

"When the fans get all worked up, it makes it more serious for the players," Crashley said. "In this case, you had two cities 30 miles apart. They were natural rivals."

Plus, the Wings and Black Hawks played almost every weekend.

"People talk about the Cowboys and Redskins as a great rivalry," Crashley said. "But they play twice a year. When you play somebody 20 times, every late hit or high stick is something you remember the next game. It gets ugly."

He played five seasons with Detroit and coached pro hockey for many years, retiring as a junior coach in Ontario.

Exactly 30 years ago, in the wee hours one morning, Fort Worth won its greatest hockey championship. Our last farm team, the Texans, beat the Black Hawks in overtime in the seventh game of the finals in Will Rogers.

You could hear the cheers in Dallas.