The World Hockey Association () was a professional ice hockey major league that operated in North America from 1972 to 1979. It was the first major league to compete with the National Hockey League (NHL) since the collapse of the Western Hockey League in 1926. Although the WHA was not the first league since that time to attempt to challenge the NHL's supremacy, it was by far the most successful in the modern era.
The WHA tried to capitalize on the lack of hockey teams in a number of major American cities and mid-level Canadian cities, and also hoped to attract the best players by paying more than NHL owners would. The WHA successfully challenged the NHL's reserve clause, which had bound players to their NHL teams even without a valid contract, allowing players in both leagues greater freedom of movement. Sixty-seven players jumped from the NHL to the WHA in the first year, led by star forward Bobby Hull, whose ten-year, $2.75 million contract was a record at the time. The league took advantage of drafting young players, as the NHL amateur draft at the time stipulated players had to be at least 20 years old to be drafted (in 1974, the NHL moved the age to 18 to compete with the WHA for that year only). The WHA took the initiative to sign European players, most famously with Vaclav Nedomansky, the first Czechoslovak to defect to North America to play hockey, in 1974; the initiative to sign European players ushered in a new era in North American hockey. Other noted names to enter the WHA in later years included Gordie Howe, who elected to return to hockey at age 45 with the Houston Aeros in 1973 to play with his sons Mark and Marty. In the seven seasons of giving out the Avco World Trophy, one of (or both) the Winnipeg Jets and Houston Aeros made the Final in each year, with Houston winning twice and Winnipeg winning three times.
The WHA was chronically unstable, with franchises occasionally relocating or folding in the middle of the season. It had an acrimonious relationship with the NHL, resulting in numerous legal battles, as well as competition for control of players and markets. In spite of this, merger talks began almost immediately. NHL owners voted down a 1977 plan to merge six WHA teams (the Edmonton Oilers, New England Whalers, Quebec Nordiques, Cincinnati Stingers, Houston Aeros, and Winnipeg Jets) into the NHL before a 1979 merger was approved. The final WHA game was played on May 20, 1979, as the Jets defeated the Oilers to win their third Avco World Trophy.
As a result, the WHA ceased operations, and four teams joined the NHL for the 1979–80 season: the Edmonton Oilers, New England (renamed Hartford) Whalers, Quebec Nordiques, and Winnipeg Jets. Of these four teams, two of the three Canadian teams — the Nordiques and Jets — eventually moved south to Denver and Phoenix, respectively. The Whalers later moved from Hartford to Raleigh, North Carolina, and were renamed the Carolina Hurricanes. The Oilers are the only WHA merger team to retain both their original nickname and city.
History
Founding
The World Hockey Association was founded in 1971 by American promoters Dennis Murphy and Gary Davidson. The men had previously been the founder and first president of the American Basketball Association, respectively.Willes, 2004, pp. 8–9 They quickly recruited Bill Hunter, president of the junior Western Canada Hockey League.Willes, 2004, p. 14 Hunter and Murphy traveled across North America recruiting franchise owners, and by September 1971, had announced that the league would begin in 1972 with ten teams, each having paid $25,000 for their franchise.Willes, 2004, p. 18
The average NHL salary in 1972 was $25,000, the lowest of the four major sports, while each player was bound by a reserve clause, that automatically extended their contract by one year when it expired, tying them to their team for the life of their career.Willes, 2004, pp. 11–12 In October 1972, the WHA announced that it would not use the reserve clause, stating that "The reserve clause won't stand up to the scrutiny of ... players, players associations, the United States Congress, the public, and the Supreme Court."Willes, 2004, p. 17 The WHA also promised much higher salaries than the NHL offered, and by the time the league began play, it had lured 67 former NHL players to its league, including Bernie Parent, Gerry Cheevers, Derek Sanderson, J. C. Tremblay, and Ted Green.Pincus, 2006, p. 139 The biggest name signed was former Chicago Black Hawks star Bobby Hull, who agreed to a ten-year, $2.7 million contract with the Winnipeg Jets, the largest in hockey history at the time, and one that lent the league instant credibility.Willes, 2004, p. 33
The NHL tried to block several of the defections. The Boston Bruins attempted to restrain Sanderson and Cheevers from joining the WHA, though a United States federal court refused to prohibit the signings. The Black Hawks were successful in having a restraining order filed against Hull and the Jets pending the outcome of legal action the Black Hawks were taking against the WHA. The new league was eager for the court action, intending to challenge the legality of the reserve clause.McFarlane, 1990, p. 132
In November 1972, Judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. of the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia placed an injunction against the NHL, preventing it from enforcing the reserve clause and freeing all players who had restraining orders against them, including Hull, to play with their WHA clubs. The decision effectively ended the NHL's monopoly on major league professional hockey talent.McFarlane, 1990, p. 133
Teams On November 1, 1971, twelve teams were formally announced. They included cities without NHL teams such as the Miami Screaming Eagles, as well as teams in cities where the league's promoters believed there was room for more than one team, such as the Los Angeles Aces, Chicago Cougars, and New York Raiders. Two of the original twelve teams moved before the first season started: the Dayton Arrows became the Houston Aeros and the San Francisco Sharks became the Quebec Nordiques. The Los Angeles franchise then took the nickname Sharks to replace Aces. The Calgary Broncos and the Screaming Eagles folded outright, replaced by the Philadelphia Blazers and the Cleveland Crusaders.
Although the league had many players under contract by June 1972, including a few NHL stars such as Bernie Parent, many of them were career minor league and college players. The new league was not considered much of a threat, until Bobby Hull, arguably the NHL's top forward at the time, jumped over. Hull had not been thought to be seriously considering signing with the WHA, even though he was in contentious salary negotiations with the Chicago Black Hawks, and when he told reporters that he would only move to the WHA "for a million dollars", it was both intended by Hull and taken by his audience to be a joke since a million dollars at that time was considered to be a ridiculous amount of money for a hockey player. Nevertheless, the Winnipeg Jets offered Hull a five-year, one million dollar contract with a one million dollar signing bonus. Hull accepted the Jets' offer, sealing the deal in an elaborate signing ceremony at Portage and Main. Hull's move to the upstart league attracted a few other top stars such as Cheevers, Sanderson, and Tremblay.
The WHA officially made its debut on October 11, 1972, at the Ottawa Civic Centre, when the Alberta Oilers defeated the Ottawa Nationals 7–4 while the Cleveland Crusaders defeated the Quebec Nordiques 2–0 at Cleveland Arena. Oilers player Ron Anderson scored the first goal in WHA history at 6:19 of the opening period in front of 5,065 fans that was broadcast live on CBC. Although the quality of hockey in the early years was predictably below that of the NHL, the WHA had indeed made stars out of many players that had little or no playing time in the NHL. For a very brief time in the leadup to the first season, the league tried orange pucks (an idea floated around in varying degrees by the NHL for years); notably, the first intended game for the Blazers against the New England Whalers on October 13 saw the game called off due to insufficient quality of ice that led to Philadelphia fans throwing their promotional giveaway red hockey pucks onto the ice. However, the dye apparently affected the quality of the pucks that became potato-shaped when hit during play; the result was they later changed the color of the pucks to dark blue.
The New England Whalers, the best team in the league for the first season, eventually won the WHA's inaugural championship, later renamed the Avco World Trophy when the Avco Financial Services Corporation became its main sponsor. However, the trophy had not yet been completed, and the Whalers skated their divisional championship trophy around the ice surface, much to the embarrassment of the WHA office. As it turned out, the best team in the league for a season for points would win the playoffs in five of the seven WHA playoffs (with 1977 and 1979 being the lone exceptions); four of the seven Avco Cup Finals were decided by the two best teams in the regular season (1974, 1977, 1979 being the exceptions). No Avco Cup Finals game played reached overtime.
Problems Right from the start, the league was plagued with problems. Many teams often found themselves in financial difficulty, folding or moving from one city to another, sometimes mid-season. Citing arena troubles, two of the original twelve teams, the Dayton Arrows and the San Francisco Sharks, relocated before the first season began, becoming the Houston Aeros and Quebec Nordiques, respectively. The Calgary Broncos and the Miami Screaming Eagles, folded outright before the first puck dropped, being replaced by the Philadelphia Blazers and the Cleveland Crusaders.