WHA Hockey.TV: A Tribute to the Legends of the World Hockey Association by Mark Willand

Welcome to WHA Hockey.TV

The World Hockey Association was a major professional ice hockey league that operated in North America from 1972 to 1979. It was the first major competition for the National Hockey League since the collapse of the Western Hockey League after the 1925-26 WHL season. 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 fact, the WHA was home to many of hockey's all-time greats, including Bobby Hull, Gordie Howe, Wayne Gretzky, Frank Mahovlich, Mark Messier, Mike Gartner, Michel Goulet and many more.

A key part of its success was its firm stance in not recognizing the reserve clause that found its way onto NHL contracts of the time, and its active scouting of players from all over the world, in contrast to the mainly North American NHL. However, the WHA was also known for its unstable franchises, and the multi-million-dollar salaries it introduced to the game have remained a source of contention.

"Just Another Job" 1972 WHA Quebec Nordiques Documentary

This film (often unintentionally hilarious) takes you behind the scenes of the WHA Quebec Nordiques in 1972. Coached by the legendary Maurice Richard, the team is playing its opening World Hockey Association game at the Quebec Coliseum. Experience the pre-game tension, the on-ice action and the dream-contract signing.  Features Richard, JC Tremblay, Jean Guy Gendron and more.

Alton White Breaks WHA Color Barrier

By Hockey Blog In Canada

Do you know who the gentleman is pictured to the left? If you don't, that's ok. I'm here to tell you. The NHL doesn't recognize any of the records set in the WHA by any player simply because the NHL doesn't recognize its largest rival to date. The WHA was the "rogue league" - a league whose players wouldn't be included in any international event that the NHL was included in. Because of this, there are a large number of records that have gone unrecognized despite the WHA having some impressive records set. The man to the left is a man who set a record that will never make a record book because of the NHL's unwillingness to acknowledge anything WHA. However, the man to left - Alton White - will be recognized here because of what he did.

Read Complete Post From Hockey Blog in Canada

Obituary: Kevin O'Shea, Minnesota Fighting Saints

DURHAM, ONT -- Former Minnesota Fighting Saint Kevin O'Shea, died on Monday at the age of 62.

O'Shea joined his older brother, Danny, on the Oshawa Generals team in 1963-64, appearing in just the one game, but his hockey career took him to the highest level. His hockey resumé included playing two seasons at St. Lawrence University, representing Canada at the 1969 World Championships and spending the 1969-70 season with the WHL's San Diego Gulls. He was claimed by the Buffalo Sabres in the inter-league draft in June 1970.

 O'Shea played parts of two seasons with the Sabres and another couple of seasons with the St. Louis Blues. The winger played 133 regular season games and another 12 in the playoffs. He also played in the WHL with Denver, Phoenix and the WHA's Fighting Saints before finishing his career in Sweden in 1976.

After retiring at the age of 29, he enrolled in the University of Windsor's law school, specializing in labour relations.

He is the loving father of Kelly, Daniel and Alexandra.

A funeral will take place on Saturday at St. Mark's Roman Catholic Church in Stouffville, ONT at 10:30 a.m.

"Bullish Times In Birmin'ham" from the SI Vault

OFF THE ICE, ANYWAY, AS ALABAMANS DISCOVER THE HAT TRICK.

ON ICE, THE BULLS' MARKET HAS BEEN BEARISH

Peter Gammons, December 13, 1976

This is Birmin'ham, y'all. Sweet Home, Alabama. This is the heart of Dixie, where signs on street corners proclaim the city as the FOOTBALL CAPITAL OF THE SOUTH, where grits 'n' biscuits 'n' gravy come with breakfast and where the smoke from the chimneys of the steel, coal and natural-gas mills smudges the skyline. And, now, where one or two nights a week in the lavish Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center Coliseum two flags hang from the scoreboard clock. One is the Stars and Stripes of the U.S.. The other? No, not the Confederate flag. The Maple Leaf of Canada.

In its 82nd year, hockey has discovered Alabama. The team is the WHA's Birmingham Bulls—formerly known as the Ottawa Nationals and the Toronto Toros—and while none of the Bulls is as popular as one of Bear Bryant's centers, the townsfolk seem fascinated by the funny new game. "We don't understand all that swishy-swishy they do with the puck," says Mike Summers, a local construction worker, "but as long as they kick some butts and win once in a while, they're the greatest thing to come here to Birmin'ham."

So, not surprisingly, the darlin' of Dixie is not an old NHLer like Frank Mahovlich or Paul Henderson, a kid star like Mark Napier or a Czechoslovakian refugee like Vaclav Nedomansky, but a 5'7", 170-pound roughneck named Leapin' Louie Nistico. Leapin' Louie and the Bulls regularly fill about half the seats in the 16,753-seat Coliseum, but so far they lead the WHA in only two departments: payroll and losses. They are in last place in the WHA's Eastern Division with an 8-20-1 record.

January 11, 2010: The 35th Anniversary of the Whalers First Game in Hartford

The Hartford Courant, January 11, 1975, by Tom Hine

The many years of waiting have long since disappeared. It's now only a matter of hours. The City of Hartford is on the major league sports map, and the New England Whalers have a home of their own. It culminates at 7:30 tonight when the first WHA hockey puck is dropped at center ice in the two-day-old Hartford Civic Center. And Hartford...and the Whalers...couldn't be happier.

It's been a long road. That's exactly where the Whalers have spent most of the last three month. On the road. Even their 13 games in West Springfield were away from home, only a temporary residence for a major league hockey team that awaited ever so patiently for the final touches on a new Civic Center they'll move into tonight.

The San Diego Mariners are listed as the Whalers' first Hartford foes, but most of the fans don't know it. The 10,507 who bought tickets to assure a sellout tonight over ten days ago could care less who the Whalers are playing. They just want to be there when it happens. Fancy words like icing, blue lines, red lines, creases, offsides...that will all come later. Teams like the Jets, Aeros, Nordiques, Fighting Saints, Roadrunners..that will all come later, too. And names like Abrahamsson, Swain, Fotiu, Ley, Webster, Pleau...they, too, may be unfamiliar to most patrons, but they'll be household words in only a short time. Hartford wanted major league hockey, and it will have it tonight.

Howard Baldwin Whalers Press Conferences 1979-1989

Howard Baldwin Press Conferences 1979-1989 .. Produced by Dave Smith in 1990

Ron "Magic" Ward: The Garbage Man Cometh

Deflections, rebounds and other close-in pickings are the repertoire of the WHA's surprise scoring ace, Ron Ward—up from NHL oblivion

Mark Mulvo, Sports Illustrated, December 18, 1972

If you add up the total footage and the total velocity of the 26 goals Ron Ward has scored for the New York Raiders this season, you might—just might—get one of Bobby Hull's 50-foot, 110-miles-an-hour slap shots. A Ward goal is a deflection or a converted rebound or a soft backhander that trickles through the goaltender's pads and comes to rest 1/1,000th of an inch across the goal line. "I am," Ward candidly admits, "a true garbage collector."

There was Ward last Wednesday night, hanging around the crease as his line-mates, Wayne Rivers and Brian Bradley, battled furiously for the puck behind the New England Whalers' net. Ward casually skated around the perimeter of the crease, not bothering a soul, and then he stopped in a spot about three feet in front of Goaltender Bruce Landon, who was hugging the right post as the skirmish for the loose puck continued behind him. Suddenly the puck rolled out toward Ward's stick. Ping! With almost casual disdain, Ward flicked a backhand shot that floated past Landon's glove, hit the goalpost and caromed in.

"I don't understand it," Bradley complained afterward. "I can shoot the puck through the boards and you can't break a pane of glass, but I've got only two goals and you've got 26. It's ridiculous." Ward tried to console his frustrated line-mate. "Brian," he said in an avuncular tone, "you've just got to learn how to talk to the puck."

WHA Profile: Danny Lawson

Blessed with blazing speed and a hard shot, Danny Lawson was one of the WHA's All-Time great offensive stars.  He was known as a defensive player in the NHL, but became the top goal scorer in the WHA;s inaugural season when teamed with skilled centre Andre Lacroix in 1972-73.

Lawson played a single game with the Detroit Red Wings in the 1968 season, before becoming a full-time professional the next year, shuffling between the Wings and the minor-league Fort Worth Wings of the Central Hockey League. Before season's end he was traded to the , serving the role of a defensive forward on the third and fourth lines. He spent the next two years with the North Stars, further splitting his time between the parent club and the minor leagues, before a trade in the 1971 offseason to the Buffalo Sabres. It was with Buffalo that Lawson finally received substantial ice time, albeit in a checking role shadowing other teams' offensive stars. It was to be his first complete season in the NHL without any time spent in the minors.

In 1972 the WHA came into existence and Lawson made the jump and signed with the Philadelphia Blazers.  Although having had a five-year career in the NHL under his belt, it was not until moving to the WHA that his scoring abilities were fully realized. In the WHA’s inaugural season, despite the presence of superstar Bobby Hull, it was Lawson who on February 22 became the first player to score 50 goals and by season’s end he led the league in goals with 61.Lawson capped that season by being selected to the WHA All Star Team's First Team.

According to Lawson, things were equally exciting off the ice (as told to Murray Greig): "The off-ice stuff was just wild.  One night after a game in New York the team stopped off at a little bar in Blackwood, New Jersey.  It turned out that a gang of bikers used this bar as one of their favorite hangouts, and they showed up juts after we got there.  They started mouthing off, and one of them threw a shot glass at our table and hit Marcel Paille in the head.

World Hockey Association: Not Professional?

At best, it was ridiculous. At worst, it was insulting. The notion, that is, that the old World Hockey Association was not a “professional” league.

But, by allowing defenseman RICK CUNNINGHAM, for one, to compete for Austria at Sarajevo, that is exactly what the International Olympic Committee, in effect, stated with their ruling on the eve of the 1984 Winter Olympic Games concerning player eligibility.

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Rare WHA Footage: Derek Sanderson Philadelphia Blazers

(The above footage shows Derek Sanderson assisting on a Don Burgess goal in Quebec.

Woeful season's start for Derek Sanderson & Co., rich but unready, illuminates the fitness of things

Mark MulvoySports Illustrated, Nov. 6, 1972

 Accustomed though they are to humiliation and despair, Philadelphia sports fans could hardly believe their wary eyes last week as $3.5 million worth of shiny new hockey talent went crashing to the ice. There they came, the gaudy Blazers, among the biggest, boldest spenders of the infant World Hockey Association and, sob, there they went: Center Derek Sanderson, possessor of a $2.3 million contract, with an injured shoulder; Goalie Bernie Parent ($750,000) with a broken foot; and Player-Coach Johnny McKenzie ($450,000), self-banished temporarily from the bench in favor of crusty old Phil Watson, once the mind and mouth of the New York Rangers. As the week ended the Blazers had settled into last place in the WHA's East Division with a 1-8 record, dutifully following the example of the town's woebegone baseball Phillies, football Eagles and basketball 76ers.

It was Sanderson above all—trendy and tactless but a superior player when he was a Boston Bruin with McKenzie—who was supposed to win hockey fans away from Bobby Clarke and the Flyers of the National Hockey League. Or at least draw enough new ones to Civic Center (formerly Convention Hall) to pay his keep. Not surprisingly, Sanderson was in a let-'em-eat-cake mood. "I got an ulcer in Boston over winning," he said. "I ain't gonna get one in Philadelphia over losing."