Though many would call the 1924-25 campaign a victory for the USHA (it had won the Challenge Cup for the first time, the two teams who had departed for the NAHC were a laughingstock in their new environs while the USHA's new teams were competitive, etc), it was something of a pyrrhic victory. The fact remained that the NAHC had deeper pockets than the USHA, particularly after the latter's three richest owners were no longer part of the league. Two - New York's Sam Bigsby and Boston's Frank Denny - were now in the NAHC while the league's wealthiest man, silver magnate Jack Connolly was dead. His son, John "Junior" Connolly Jr. was wealthy, but he also had two siblings with whom Jack's fortune had been split. Exacerbating the problem was that the league's next-wealthiest owner - Philadelphia's Thomas Franklin - abruptly pulled the plug on his admittedly underwhelming club in early April.

Franklin was not only the Philadelphia owner, but also the interim league president. With his folding of the Rascals in April, the USHA was left without a president. Into the breach stepped George Yeadon, the former TCHA League President and owner of the New York Eagles, who volunteered for the interim role and was given it in an emergency meeting of the five remaining owners at the end of April. The Rascals themselves faded into the mists of history but they would live in the memories of hockey fans as the starting point in the career of one of the game's greatest defensemen - a fellow named Cyrus Beech who would go on to become a legend in later years.

The USHA would replace the Rascals with a team in the Windy City. At long last, millionaire Augustus Hoch, who had been pursued by Jack Connolly twice and spurned him both times, agreed to join the USHA. Credit for the change can be partially awarded to George Yeadon who was a much easier fellow with whom to deal than Connolly had been, but the larger portion would go to the NAHC itself, who wanted to charge Hoch $75,000 for the right to put a club in Chicago. For Hoch, a German immigrant who had arrived as a penniless teenager in 1890 and built a meatpacking (and later restaurant) fortune, this was too much. Yeadon offered him the Rascals franchise for a modest $15,000, with the tacit understanding that Hoch would move the club to Chicago, where he had built an arena three years earlier - one designed primarily for prize fighting, but more than able to accommodate hockey as well.

With Hoch's admission to the USHA the NAHC immediately sought a countermove and decided to add a seventh club, placing it in what was seen as the last "prime market" not yet tapped - Detroit, Michigan. The brand-new Detroit Bulldogs would play in Eddie Thompson's Detroit Arena, but would be owned by grocery chain owner Caleb Weston. Thompson had declined to own the team as he was heavily leveraged and didn't have enough cash to pay the $75,000 expansion fee. He would later call this missed opportunity "his biggest regret."