October 11, 1972. It was hockey night in Canada but, somehow, it wasn't the same old game. A team wearing jungle green uniforms with glittering gold trim squared off against a team in orange, Northern blue and white. Most of the players were unknowns. The arenas were smaller than those of the NHL and fortuitously so, since the smaller arenas better masked the vacancies. The hockey was not up to NHL calibre, but this new league was more colourful — perhaps more vulgar — than the NHL. It was also decidedly less stagnant than its ancient rival.
     The pucks gleamed a fire engine red, recalling the red, white and blue basketballs of the upstart American Basketball Association. The resemblance between the ABA and the WHA was no mere coincidence. The men behind the WHA — Gary L Davidson and Dennis Murphy — were the same two men who banked their wealth on the ABA five years earlier. Flush with the early-going success on the hardwood, Davidson and Murphy set out to change hockey. Like the ABA, the WHA had no tradition, but then it also had no legacy. Convention was quickly tossed out the window. Gone was the NHL’s tight restriction on the stick curvature. The roughing rule was dropped and the regulation game misconduct in the NHL for third-man-in-a-fight was reduced to a mere two-minute misdemeanour. Said president Davidson on this matter, "we just want to see our stars on the ice."
     As for stars: Well, they were few but the new league did score a couple of big names in the early going. The WHA pulled off a major coup by signing Bobby Hull. Perhaps the more liberal stick curvature lured the slapshot king. Or maybe it was the $2,750,000 salary. (An unheard-of figure, at the time.) Less xenophobic than the NHL, the WHA anxiously tapped the European leagues. By circumventing the NHL's self-imposed age limit on children, the WHA raided Canada’s junior leagues for untried 17 year-olds. Thanks to this liberal rule, the Indianapolis Racers secured a young Brantford boy of some repute, just months before the NHL could draft him.
     But to sign players of Gretzky’s ilk, the new league needed an endless pipeline of money. The Minnesota Fighting Saints officially drafted governor Wendell Anderson, a former junior league all star. The governor never did suit up but he managed to stick-handle his way through the state legislature to secure the cash necessary to pay the team’s entrance fee. For backing the WHA during those doubtful early days, Avco Financial’s name was engraved onto the WHA’s post-season prize trophy.
     Even before the first face-off, the Miami Screaming Eagles and the Calgary Cowboys defaulted. (The Eagles spent most of its investment cash just to secure Bernie Parent from the Maple Leafs.) The Dayton Aeros failed to find an arena, and finally moved to the hockey hotbed of Houston. Still without a name, a San Francisco franchise was purchased by Carling-O’Keefe and placed in Quebec City — a town initially spurned by the WHA. Undaunted by the failure of four teams, the ambitious Davidson curiously announced that four more teams — Cleveland, New England, Ottawa and Philadelphia — would be accepted for the premier season, bringing the number of starters to 12.
     These early crises did not deter Davidson. He knew exactly what his fellow Americans wanted. Lots of goals and lots of blood. But it wasn’t enough.
     After two seasons, things started to unravel. Franchises located in the most remote hockey burrows collapsed. Upon receiving its eviction notice from Harold Ballard the Toronto Toros had to settle for a new home in, of all places, Alabama. Despite having just lost a team (the Nationals) due to lack of popularity, Ottawa lost a second franchise (the Civics) a year later. Unable to pay rent, some franchises moved once, even twice, in the same season. Pity the poor league statistician handed the unenviable task of keeping track of teams that moved faster than the skaters on the ice.
     Seven short years did leave its mark, though. Like the ABA, whose new-fangled rules (the three-point zone, for example) infiltrated the NBA, the WHA managed to expose the ultra-conservative governors of the National Hockey League to some fresh ideas. The NHL brought back overtimes, altered its shorthanded icing rule to favour the offense and adopted neutral zone rule changes. All these were inspired by the WHA.