Bruce A. Norris, owner of the Detroit Red Wings, had the idea that the best European teams in a professional league should co-operate with the NHL to create a real global ice hockey league. The European Ice Hockey League Ltd would start in October 1973, each of the six teams would play each other 10 times (five games at home, five away) and each team would play 30 games at home and 30 away. Each team would have 25 players on contract and out of a total of 150 players there would be 80 North Americans. The main income would come from ticket sales since advertising and television rights were believed to only generate 30% of the income. Norris appointed Joe Besch as European manager. He was based in Vienna, Austria. A press release of 14 September 1972 refers to him as "interim and acting President of the League". John Ziegler (who would be president of the NHL from 1977 to 1992) had been Norris' lawyer since 1959 and was also involved in the plans for the new league.

Norris, Besch and Ziegler were primarly looking for arenas and cities that were large enough AND situated in European countries where hockey already was played. They specifically wanted to place a team in Gothenburg, Sweden, where the newly built Scandinavium arena (inaugurated on 18 May 1971) had an attendance capacity of 12 000, at the time the largest covered arena in northern Europe. Johanneshov Stadium in Stockholm with a capacity of 8000 was also considered. Finland had two suitable arenas in Helsinki (11 000) and Tampere (10 000). Switzerland had three suitable rinks - Bern, Geneva and Zurich. Basel was also mentioned, but there would be only one Swiss team, probably based in Geneva. Düsseldorf in West Germany was also mentioned as a possible venue. London had housed several hockey teams during the first half of the century and now Norris was planning to build a brand new arena with an attendance capacity of 18000. Other possible venues mentioned were Milan in northern Italy, Vienna (Austria) and maybe Rotterdam in the Netherlands, a team which also could play in Belgium (Antwerp) and France.

The idea was that the Finnish and Swedish teams would supply their own players - after all, the league was presented as a way to keep European players in Europe - while the West German team would consist of the best Central European players, maybe 10-15 German and Swiss players. The rest of the players in the league would be North Americans and outcasts from the Finnish and Swedish teams. London would have a team made up entirely of Canadians, effectively a farm team of the Detroit Red Wings. In December 1972, Norris and his men reported that they had booked 27 dates at the Wembley Empire Pool in London for the upcoming 1973-74 season.

The plans for eastern Europe were vague. Teams in Moscow, Leningrad, Prague and Bratislava were mentioned, as was one Polish team and one East German. These would form an Eastern division. ZKL Brno from Czechoslovakia reportedly wanted to join the league but wasn't allowed by their national hockey association. It was believed that the Czechs and Soviets were interested in playing against North American teams and also in western currency, but it was nevertheless unlikely that they would join a very American-style league like this. However, John Ziegler said that the NHL would only play against the winner of European League and no Russian team if they're not in the league. Andrei Starovoytov, the general secretary of the Soviet Union Ice Hockey Federation and the one who had negotiated Soviet participation in the 1972 Summit Series, participated in several meetings about the league, for example a one held in Montreal in December 1972.

Stockholm, Helsinki and Tampere had similar problems to solve. These cities all had more than one elite team with decade-long rivalries but now they had to co-operate to make way for a professional team and convert themselves to farm teams. That was the fact in Stockholm for AIK, Djurgården and Södertälje, in Helsinki for IFK and Jokerit and in Tampere for Tappara, Ilves and KooVee. Mikko J. Westerberg, the managing director of Tappara, had already turned his team into a semi-professional team since his players were on the payroll of Montreal Sports Ltd, the producer of the famous Ryon Montreal hockey sticks. The players of the professional team would be paid in the same way, Westerberg said, and suggested that the new team would be named Tampere - or even Ryon Montreal.

The group in Helsinki formed a company with Aimo Mäkinen and Timo Haapaniemi representing Jokerit while Göran Stubb and Frank Moberg represented IFK. Mäkinen adamantly stated that a joint team in Helsinki wouldn't be called IFK. If the hometown arena closed its doors to professionals, the Helsinki team was even prepared to play abroad or in the smaller arenas in Vaasa, Lahti and Forssa.

The team in Gothenburg was to be lead by Sven-Åke Nyström, an orienteer in his youth and later a businessman in the United States. As coach, Nyström wanted to employ Arne Strömberg, former coach of the Swedish national team and at the time coaching Karlstad based team Färjestad. The team in Gothenburg would be built around Ulf Sterner, who would be given a role similar to the one Bobby Hull had when the WHA was launched. Sterner said that the name and the uniform of the new team would be decided after a contest. Nyström wanted to draft the whole Swedish national team while Strömberg said he had talked with a handful Czechoslovakian players about joining the team. Frölunda - or Färjestad as Sterner suggested - would be a farm team of the new team.

The team in Stockholm would be lead by Bror Mellberg, a former Swedish soccer international who won the bronze medal in the 1950 World Cup and silver in 1958. He played professional soccer in Italy and France in the 50s and became a businessman when he returned to Sweden in the 60s. He wanted to hire Kjell Svensson as coach for the Stockholm team, the coach for the Swedish national team at the time. AIK, Djurgården and Södertälje, three sports associations that usually were bitter enemies, were said to have joined in a company to back up the new team and simultanously take a step back to become its farm teams. The Johanneshov arena was frequently used for games and practices by several teams and Mellberg found that it was difficult to book dates for the league. Johanneshov could be used by the European league for maybe 10-15 games out of the stipulated 30 and it was said that the Stockholm team would play the rest in Karlskoga, Malmö and Västerås and maybe even abroad. Pretty soon the construction of a brand new arena in Ulriksdal north of Stockholm was suggested.

The team in Geneva would be lead by Lars Laestadius who was born in Stockholm but now living in Zug, Switzerland. He wanted to enlist Canadian Ed Reigle as coach. Reigle was well-known in Europe, having coached the national teams of Sweden (1957-60) and West Germany (1966-68) and some Swiss and German clubs as well. Laestadius said that he was already in talks with a handful players.

The reactions in Europe to the plans differed a lot. The "Big 4" - Sweden, Finland, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union - all wanted to have their best players available for the World Championships and the Olympic Games, which professionalism wouldn't allow. And while the regimes east of the Iron Curtain just simply forbid their players to become pros, neither Sweden nor Finland could or would do that. The Swedish Icehockey Association and its chairman Helge Berglund wanted to protect the National team from being drained but had no real alternative to professionalism. He tried to barr all national icepalaces and threatened to blacklist others like Scandinavium in Gothenburg (run by his former collegue Bertil Rönnberg) but if that would happen, the new league said they would buy Scandinavium.

European hockey players liked the idea of being professionals at home rather than in North America, but of course it also depended of what they were paid. Additionally, some were worried it would affect their Olympic eligibility. The Britons and the Dutch were far from able to compete with the Big 4 with inbred players, but with a "foreign legion" of paid sportsmen, they would. Sports editor Jack Dulmage wrote in The Windsor Star, 11 September 1973: "It is fairly obvious that Detroit are not planting Canadian players in Europe for any other purpose than to generate potential Red Wing talent. Another reason for the European league is to preclude the WHA in getting a toehold there. In other words, The NHL is interested in re-establishing its former monopoly by leaving no stones unturned to hasten the event".

One of the ideas Norris had was that the winner of the European league would play the NHL champion for a club world championship but this raised some unanswered questions. The Stanley Cup had originally been a challenge cup and back then a challenge could take place at any time or place. But that was in the 1910s before the NHL took control of the cup, and after that they have flatly stated that they would not expose the Stanley Cup to non-NHL competition. When the WHA threw a newspaper challenge at the NHL for the Stanley Cup, the NHL just ignored it. Norris said that each team in the European league would have a working agreement with an NHL club, but what would a potential world final between an NHL team and its affiliate be called? An intrasquad world final? Also, there was no definite information regarding what the other clubs in the NHL thought about a European league. Seven or eight teams were said to be interested in affiliates in Europe but none of them said anything about in public and it seems mostly to have been unconfirmed rumours.

The idea that the Montreal Canadiens would place a farm club in Finland may have been a misunderstanding of the talk that the team in Tampere would be named Ryon Montreal after their sponsor. The Toronto Maple Leafs placing a team in Sweden was another rumour. It's true that Toronto was one of the teams that very early were looking for Swedish talent, but these were intended for the NHL. Börje Salming and Inge Hammarström joined the Maple Leafs for the 1973-74 season, and according to Swedish media Toronto were also interested in Anders Hedberg (who later joined Winnipeg Jets in the WHA). In the 1974 draft, Toronto claimed Per-Arne Alexandersson (round 3, #49 overall) but he ended up playing just one season with farm team Oklahoma City Blazers in the CHL. It was also said that the Minnesota North Stars would sponsor a Central European team while the New York Rangers were interested in establishing a team in Vienna. However, the closest connection at the time between these teams and Central Europe was Walt Tkaczuk, a player in the Rangers with Ukrainian origin and dual Canadian-German citizenship.

Another thing was that the European model for organizing sport is so completely different compared with the North American way. In Europe, the traditional way has been sports associations, often with several branches (soccer, handball, ski-ing, ice hockey and so on) but with the same colours, crests and name. And the league system is based on each team having to qualify depending on the results. If you're in the top division and have more losses than wins, you may be relegated to the next division. It's a big cultural difference and when planning this league, Norris completely ignored a system that worked and just wanted to install another system.

How the fans of these clubs would react was also an ignored question. It was far from obvious that the fans of, say AIK and Djurgården, would immediately cheer for a brand new creation named Stockholm. A similar thing actually happened in North America (even if wasn't yet obvious in 1972) but the WHA learned the hard way that it was useless to place a team in a city that already had an NHL franchise. The fans of the old teams were loyal and within a couple of years the WHA teams in Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Boston, New York, Toronto, Philadelphia and Vancouver all had to move or fold. The media landscape was another big difference. Television was established much later in Europe than in North America, and in the early 1970s there weren't many channels and most TV companies were public broadcasters financed via licence fees.

All this led to the four top European nations saying no to the pro league at a meeting at Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky in Amsterdam on 1 February 1973. They opted for playing more games with the national teams instead. Norris and his men were baffled and disappointed but soon developed new ideas. Would it be possible to start the league anyway? Nyström and Mellberg said that if they couldn't run their teams in Sweden, they'll do it somewhere else. Spain and England were interested and Norris also had to consider the dates he had booked at the Wembley Empire Pool in London for the 1973-74 season. As a matter of fact, everything seemed to depend on Bruce A. Norris. Arne Strömberg, the supposed coach of the team in Gothenburg said he was a bit tired waiting to hear from Nyström.

In mid-March, after a meeting in Frankfurt, the Swiss team leader Laestadius left the project. He had finally realized that he was supposed to finance his own team, something he neither could nor would do. The question is, did all the men involved think they were employed by Norris? Well, so it seemed. When interviewed by Colin Maitland in The Guardian on 28 September 1974, a frustrated Joe Besch said: "We were talking about starting a European league that could be worth millions to the various owners if handled properly but these people seemed to think Norris should foot the bill for everything".

At a press conference in Stockholm on 18 May 1973, the latest ideas were presented. Because of the upcoming World Championships in Finland (in April 1974), where the arranging country wanted to be able to ice their best players, the two Finnish teams wouldn't be full members but still play several exhibition games against teams in the league. If they weren't allowed into arenas in Finland, those games would be played abroad. The two Swedish teams presented a wishlist of players they wanted to employ - basically both the A and B national teams - but it wasn't any real offers. According to this list, a handful of the Swedish players would be placed elsewhere in Europe.

Krefeld was now presented as the venue for the West German team and for the first time the London Lions were mentioned, represented at the meeting by their future coach and general manager Doug Barkley. The league would start on 6 October 1973, each team would play 30 games followed by quarterfinals between the best four. Each winner of the quarterfinals would then meet either a Soviet or Czechoslovakian team in the semifinals. How the eastern bloc teams would qualify wasn't mentioned. The European champion would then meet the Stanley Cup champion in a world final. The main office of the European league would be in London and Bill Beagan, at the time president of the IHL, would be president of the new league. In August they would start a school for referees in Gothenburg where refs from each country would be invited. The best would then be hired by the league. Also, a training camp for the players would start in September.