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

WHA Photo of the Day: Rick Ley and Curt Brackenury

Rick Ley (Whalers) and Curt Brackenbury (Fighting Saints) Let 'em fly.

Video: Whalers 1972-73 Championship Video (23 minutes)

New England Whalers WHA 1972-73 Highlite Video in its entirety

Video: Rick Ley Whalers Hall of Fame Induction

Tim Sheehy Recalls ‘Forgotten Team’

Jay Gearan -- Worcester telegram and Gazette

Former Hartford Whaler Tim Sheehy doesn’t play hockey anymore, but he’s still always around rinks, some nights watching his son, Dan, play for Algonquin Regional, other nights scouting potential college and professional players.

Today, on the 30th anniversary of the famous “Miracle on Ice” victory for the U.S. Olympic gold-medal winning team in 1980, Sheehy can look back with pride even further, to the 1972 Games in Sapporo, Japan, when his U.S. team won the silver medal.

In 1972, with the country embroiled in social unrest and the war in Vietnam, Olympic athletes did not command the media attention that exploded eight years later at Lake Placid.

“We’ve been called ‘The Forgotten Team,’ ” said Sheehy, who co-captained the all-amateur squad. “Russia won it all, and that was probably the greatest hockey team ever assembled with someone who many of us thought was the best player in the world, Valeri Kharlamov.”

Sheehy, was a star high school hockey player from International Falls, Minn., and led his team to 59 consecutive wins and three straight state championships. He turned down NHL draft opportunities and chose a full athletic scholarship to Boston College in 1966.

Hartford Courant: Howard Baldwin Bringing Brass Bonanza Back to Hartford?

According to the Hartford Courant, former WHA President and Whalers founder Howard Baldwin is in discussions to bring the Whalers back to Hartford:

"Howard Baldwin has taken serious steps toward taking over management of the AHL franchise in Hartford. That's what our sources are telling us.

Yet the bigger truth needs no unnamed sources: Baldwin never did step away from this pursuit and he has never stopped dreaming big dreams. So the end game here could be more than a minor league hockey team and, no, I'm not only talking about a major league hockey team."

Full Article Here:  http://www.courant.com/sports/hockey/hc-jeff-jacobs-0215feb15,0,7219450.column

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

Birthday Wishes: Fred O'Donnell, New England Whalers

 BY NEIL ACHARYA, The Hockey News

The Boston Bruins of the early 1970s are solidified in hockey lore.

Orr, Esposito, Buyck and Cheevers are some of the names that immediately come to mind.

Among those big names was a gritty young winger from Gananoque, Ont., named Fred O’Donnell.

“I was certainly fortunate to be playing for the Bruins during that time,” O’Donnell said. “A lot of the popularity with the club has stayed with that era.”

One special night in Gananoque, O’Donnell was in attendance when NHL scouts discovered a kid named Bobby Orr during a bantam playoff game.

“He must have been pretty special for me to remember that particular game,” O’Donnell noted.

Little did he know at the time, the two would one day be teammates with the Big, Bad Bruins.

O’Donnell, who came up in the era when players were signed by an organization – often in their early teens – instead of going through the draft, was no stranger to the Boston Garden when he finally broke in with the Bruins in 1972-73.

“I played my first game in the Garden when I was 17,” he said. “The Bruins sponsored both the Niagara Falls Flyers and the Oshawa Generals and flew them down to showcase prospects.

“I always enjoyed playing at the Gardens – we had good teams and I liked the smaller ice surface and the physical play,” added O’Donnell, who also played at the Gardens as a member of the American League’s Boston Braves.

O’Donnell scored his first goal on Long Island against Billy Smith. Just as any player would, he got the puck.

“A couple of months later I received another puck on a plaque stating it was my first goal,” he said. “I now have two pucks stating they were my first.”

That season, the Bruins were vying for a third Stanley Cup in four seasons, but major injuries to Orr and Phil Esposito resulted in an early exit from the playoffs at the hands of the New York Rangers. That didn’t stop O’Donnell and a few of his teammates from having Esposito join them at a party to celebrate the season.

Exclusive Interview with Jim Dorey

Click Here Good Interview with WHA Rearguard Jim Dorey

BIll Butters Hockey Ministry

Separated by Plexiglas and a generational gap, he watches a familiar scene. Players swoop and spin, occasionally crashing into one another with a shout, or blasting a slap shot that explodes in the empty arena at the National Hockey Center.

"It's a violent game," Bill Butters said.

He should know. Butters, 58, played at the University of Minnesota in the early 1970s, then went on to a pro career that included 100 fights and more than 240 stitches in his face.

Thirty years after he last appeared as a defenseman with the Minnesota North Stars, he's still around the rinks — only now it's with a Bible under his arm. Its black cover carries the logo of a skate with a cross on the heel.

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