The rebel league of the WHA gave shining stars their big-league debut and others their swan song, and provided high-octane fuel for some spectacular flameouts. It ended the NHL’s monopoly, freed players from the reserve clause, ushered in the 18-year-old draft, moved the game into the Sun Belt, and put European players on the ice in numbers previously unimagined. It was the vanguard that drove hockey into the modern age. It introduced the crackpots, goons, and crazies that are so well remembered as the league’s bizarre legacy.īut the hit-and-miss league was much more than a travelling circus of the weird and wonderful. The upstart WHA introduced to the world 27 new hockey franchises, a trail of bounced cheques, fractious lawsuits, and folded teams. They didn’ t know much about hockey, but they sure knew how to shake things up. It began as the moneymaking scheme of two California lawyers. There’s the making of Slap Shot, that classic of modern cinema, and the making of the virtuoso line of Hull, Anders Hedberg, and Ulf Nilsson. And how Mark Howe sometimes forgot not to yell “Dad!” when he called for his teammate father, Gordie, to pass. How the Oilers had to smuggle fugitive forward Frankie “Seldom” Beaton out of their dressing room in an equipment bag. It explains how a team of naked Birmingham Bulls ended up in an arena concourse spoiling for a brawl.
It tells the story of Bobby Hull’ s astonishing million-dollar signing, which helped launch the league, and how he lost his toupee in an on-ice scrap. It is filled with hilarious anecdotes, behind the scenes dealing, and simply great hockey. The Rebel League celebrates the good, the bad, and the ugly of the fabled WHA. The wildest seven years in the history of hockey
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