season, 1926–27, was the first full-season campaign as a professional league. Culver City became known as the Maroons, and a team sponsored by the Los Angeles Globe Ice Cream Company joined the league. At mid-season, the league accepted a challenge series from the Detroit Millionaires of the Michigan-Ontario amateur league. After the series concluded, several members of the Millionaires chose to remain in California and shore up the struggling Maroons team; the resulting team would eventually become known as the Hollywood Millionaires. The league gradually become known as the California Professional Hockey League (CPHL). In March 1927, the Illinois-based promoter C. C. Pyle (representing football legend Red Grange) purchased the Winter Garden. Pyle, who had failed in attempts to buy the Toronto Maple Leafs and New York Americans, had a vision of a future "East-West World Series" to be played against the NHL. He brought an influx of cash and an agreement to restructure the CPHL into a 4-team professional league comprising Los Angeles, Hollywood, San Francisco, and Oakland. Even though Pyle would be out of the league within by 1929, his 4-team concept set the agenda for the CPHL in the late 1920s. One of Pyle's first moves to increase the CPHL's exposure was to schedule a post-season series against the barnstorming Chicago Black Hawks. To make the Hawks' opponents more competitive, the league-champion Globe Ice Cream team was split between the Oilers and Maroons. The Globes never re-assembled, and in 1927-28 the league played with only the three remaining franchises. In 1928-29, the league adopted Pyle's vision and for the first time became an inter-city league. Lloyd Cook's Maroons were relocated to San Francisco where they were nicknamed the Seals, after the local minor-league baseball team. A second franchise, the Oakland Sheiks, was stacked with talented young players who had jumped en masse from western amateur leagues, particularly in Saskatoon. Their goaltender was the prominent Hec Fowler, formerly a star in the PCHA. The Sheiks consistently dominated the league for the rest of its existence. 1929 proved to be the highwater mark of the CPHL. While still clearly the lowest-level minor league in North America, it regularly graduated players into the higher levels and even produced an occasional NHL contract. Its location opened up a variety of opportunities for publicity: boxing champion Willie Ritchie played goal for San Francisco, singer/actor Al Jolson and director Guy Empey owned shares