The 1921-22 season marked a turning point in the history of pro hockey. Jack Connolly, the maverick visionary who had pulled Canadian hockey kicking and screaming into professionalism over a decade earlier, now did the same thing in the United States, accomplishing two goals: thumbing his nose at the NAHC and once again reclaiming a role as the head of a pro hockey league. Connolly's new league was called, fittingly enough, the United States Hockey Association. The USHA launched its initial season with clubs in four large American cities: Boston, Buffalo, New York City and Philadelphia. Though he failed to draw any marquee names from either the TCHA or NAHC (and he tried with the latter), Connolly's loop proved to be modestly successful by populating its clubs with players from minor leagues (mostly the Plains Hockey Association which operated in Manitoba and Alberta).
Connolly had positioned his league to compete for the Challenge Cup by making an arrangement with the Transcontinental Hockey Association for the USHA & TCHA champions to meet for the right to face the NAHC champions for the Cup. The Challenge Cup trustees had agreed to this over the objections of the NAHC who derided the new circuit as "second rate" and who wanted no part of dealing with Connolly. Connolly himself co-owned the Buffalo franchise which was nicknamed the Bears. Buffalo was both the franchise closest to Connolly's native Canada and the one which most needed his capital behind it. The other three clubs were all owned by wealthy individuals who also owned their arenas. Connolly's partner owned the Buffalo arena and was willing to be a silent partner. Unfortunately for Connolly, his club was by far the least talented.
Since being expelled from the North American Hockey Confederation in 1917, Jack Connolly had been loudly proclaiming that he'd be back with a league of his own. And though this was mostly treated as so much noise by the NAHC and the western-based Transcontinental Hockey Association, Connolly was working towards his stated goal.
The first decision was the easy one: Connolly wanted to build his league in virgin territory - the large and densely populated cities of the United States. While the TCHA had put clubs in both Portland and Seattle, those cities were far from the big metropolises east of the Mississippi. And while hockey was nowhere near as popular as baseball, it also wouldn't compete with the spring and summer sport - and the amateur version of hockey was popular, particularly in the northeast and around the Great Lakes. So Connolly courted wealthy and sports-minded individuals in large U.S. cities like New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and Detroit. Those were the places in which he wanted to plant his flag.