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The wildest seven years in the history of
hockey
The Rebel League celebrates the
good, the bad, and the ugly of the fabled WHA. It is
filled with hilarious anecdotes, behind the scenes
dealing, and simply great hockey. 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 explains how a team of naked
Birmingham Bulls ended up in an arena concourse spoiling
for a brawl. How the Oilers had to smuggle fugitive
forward Frankie “Seldom” Beaton out of their dressing
room in an equipment bag. And how Mark Howe sometimes
forgot not to yell “Dad!” when he called for his
teammate father, Gordie, to pass. 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.
It began as the moneymaking scheme of
two California lawyers. They didn’t know much about
hockey, but they sure knew how to shake things up. The
upstart WHA introduced to the world 27 new hockey
franchises, a trail of bounced cheques, fractious
lawsuits, and folded teams. It introduced the crackpots,
goons, and crazies that are so well remembered as the
league’s bizarre legacy.
But the hit-and-miss league
was much more than a travelling circus of the weird and
wonderful. It was the vanguard that drove hockey into
the modern age. 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.
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. By the end of its seven years, there were
just six teams left standing, four of which – the
Winnipeg Jets, Quebec Nordiques, Edmonton Oilers, and
Hartford Whalers – would wind up in the expanded
NHL.
From the Hardcover edition.
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