By DAVE SHOIHET - The Montreal Star - 1/20/1976
The Montreal Quebecois have been sold. The buyer — the National Lacrosse League. “As of 5 p.m. Thursday (yesterday) the club no longer belongs to us,” Nelson Stoll, major shareholder of the club, announced.
“As you know I gave the league complete authority to find a buyer for the team (last November) and now the league has made a satisfactory arrangement with me and my associates to take over the club as an interested third party,” Stoll said. “The league is expected to transfer the club to new owners which will be announced in the very near future.”
It is almost two years to the day that Stoll, Quebecois’ coach and general manager Jim Bishop, Morley Kells, coach and GM of Long Island Tomahawks, Bruce Norris of Detroit and Tristram Colket Jr., owner of the Maryland Arrows, got together to formulate plans to revive professional lacrosse.
“I was in lacrosse for two years,” Stoll pointed out. “I am happy how things turned out. I think we sold the game in this area and all the people attending our meeting yesterday are convinced that there is a bright future for it in the years ahead.”
Status uncertain Bishop, meanwhile, says he’s still employed by “Nelson Stoll and Associates” and when the new owners take over “they are free to continue to employ me as general manager and coach of the team or not to employ me.”
Bishop joined the Quebecois organization last season after spending one year with Toronto Tomahawks. The Toronto club folded after one year in the league and was subsequently moved to Boston. The Boston club is another problem to the league since it is looking for an arena to play in next season.
The Boston Garden is expected to undergo renovations over the summer. There are a number of options left to the owners of the Boston team. It could play its home games in Boston’s Walter Brown Arena or play some games in Boston and others in Cape Cod, Hartford, Conn., or Providence, R.I.
In a prepared statement, NLL commissioner Gerry Patterson said that another board of governors meeting will be held in the very near future to settle the sale of the Montreal franchise, the Boston issue, league schedule and draft. Patterson said he hopes the league will begin its 50-game schedule no later than May 15.
The other clubs in the league — Quebec City, Long Island, Philadelphia and Maryland — said that they are all set for another season.
