The Rebel League: The Short and Unruly Life of the World Hockey Association (Hardcover)

by Ed Willes (Author)
Key Phrases: final playoff spot, penalty minutes, hockey man, The Rebel League, Bobby Hull, Fighting Saints (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
“A must-read for hockey fans.”
—Canadian Press

“A book fuelled by the fumes of the WHA’s audacity, reckless hope, violence, and economic hilarity. . . . A highly entertaining tale.”
—Globe and Mail


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Product Description
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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart (September 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0771089473
• ISBN-13: 978-0771089473
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,116,783 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Verbal History of The WHA, October 10, 2004

By	Sport History Reader "WHA Fan" (Windsor, ON) - See all my reviews

This is a great book about the WHA, its players, coaches and franchises and its impact on modern hockey as told through interviews with many of those involved in the league. The book is written in the same style as "Loose Balls", Terry Pluto's excellent history of the ABA, which is a collection of anecdotes and interviews coupled with factual information, statistics and an ample dose of humour. It is fitting that this style was used since Dennis Murphy (who started the ABA) also started the WHA.

Many of the WHA's best players are interviewed including Gordie Howe and his sons Mark and Marty, Bobby Hull, Wayne Gretzky and HNIC commentator Harry Neale, late of the Minnesota Fighting Saints. Anecdotes from these interviews abound: Jacques Plante and his cross country skiing fetish, Rocket Richard the reluctant coach, Bobby Hull making sure his check didn't bounce, the story of the Carlson brothers and Dave Hanson in "Slapshot" and the story of Gordie Howe signing with the Aeros with his sons are some of the memorable ones.

Individual chapters are devoted to the league's beginnings, and to the more important and influential teams. Houston, Winnipeg, Quebec City, Ottawa/Toronto/Birmingham and Minnesota pretty much all get individual chapters, while other teams like Cincinnati, New England, Phoenix, Alberta/Edmonton and Indianapolis get less attention, the latter two mostly in the final chapters when Gretzky is discussed. Some franchises like LA/Michigan/Baltimore, Chicago, NY/NJ/San Diego and Denver/Ottawa are virtually non-existent in the book, which is too bad since their exclusion makes the league look more stable than it really was. Granted these teams weren't around long enough for much history to accumulate and its debatable whether anyone would want to admit they were affiliated with them!

A lot of the information in the early chapters on how low player's salaries were and the corrupt relationship between the NHL and the CAHA is timely and interesting given the current strike in the NHL, not to mention the unethical practice of teams selecting agents for their players. The book also paints some people in a less than favourable (and rightly deserved) light, Alan Eaglson, Harold Ballard and Richard Sorkin to name a few.

Overall the book was entertaining, it could have used a lot more information on some of the other lesser known franchises and perhaps more of the "front office view" (ie business aspects) of the league versus the "on the ice" view that sometimes reads like an episode of Don Cherry's old show "Grapevine". Still, it is a good read and well worth the time.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wild and wooly tales, August 23, 2005

By	Brian Maitland (Vancouver, BC, Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is one of the better books on hockey although it does have some glaring omissions and weird photo choices.

There is virtually nothing on the 1974 Team Canada (really Team WHA) vs. USSR Summit Series plus no mention of the fact that games against the Soviet All-Stars and Czechoslovakia actually counted in the 1977/78 standings which I would like to have known how they decided on that. Plus it's not just these international connections, there's no mention of the fact the WHA reintroduced overtime (10 minutes) to regular season hockey or that they even tried out the shootout in 1972 exhibition games.

Somehow he completely left out talking about Jim Harrison who had a modern major hockey record 10-point game. Another guy to get nary a mention was goalie Don "Smokey" McLeod who was known for his curved stick, a record 43 assists in his WHA career and stopping two penalty shots in a single period not once...but in two different games!

I understand you can't touch on everyone but I often felt too much text was given to the brawlers (who are highly entertaining and funny) but not enough to some of the more remarkable offensive feats.

Also, who approved the pictures? The front cover is of Bobby Hull (as it should be) but it's of him being shoved by what looks like Brad Selwood. Come on! You gotta have Hull flying in on goal shooting the puck as your cover ...and put the Wayner on the back cover.

The appendix is totally lame just listing teams year by year. They had enough room so why not put the standings and maybe playoff results in that space?

Plus inside we get a pic of Derek Sanderson in his Blazers' jersey but it sure looks like he's wearing an AHL Boston Braves (huh?) jersey. Also, the pic of Ulf Nilsson, Anders Hedberg and Bobby Hull is not even in their Jets' jerseys. It looks like Nilsson is wearing a New York Rangers #18 Andre Dore jersey. What is up with that? The caption also says they are "celebrating a goal" but if they are, why are all three wearing different jerseys while Hull is not wearing any hockey gloves, has no stick and is clutching another jersey in his hands?

Enough of the negative as the positive does outweigh the negative here. His call for the "Hockey" (not NHL!) Hall of Fame to recognize Nilsson, Hedberg and Mark Howe is a point well taken. I also dug the whole birth of the WHA and how it all came together. Plus he is able to articulate how the NHL Oilers of the '80s based their freewheeling style on the WHA Jets of the Hull-Hedberg-Nilsson era.

He also gave the best description of what actually happened in the Rick Jodzio attack on Marc Tardif incident which was probably the WHA's low point.

The stories about Gordie Howe and his two sons were endlessly fascinating and worthy of a book on their own, too.

Willes' style is breezy and you can read this in one sitting but given the goldmine of material, I wanted about 200 more pages.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The story you're about to read is true., January 16, 2005

By	Brent A. Anthonisen "Johnny Sideburns" (Alpharetta, GA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Because you couldn't make this stuff up. Yes, Virginia, there really WERE Hanson Brothers...and among the other characters chronicled in "The Rebel League : The Short and Unruly Life of the World Hockey Association", they are some of the more well-adjusted people you'll read about.

By the time I got interested in hockey the WHA had already folded its tents and began its inevitable fade into...well, somewhere between legend and the haze of attempting to recall details from an alcoholic blackout. Was it really just a league of goons, kooks, and has-been graybeard NHL stars intent on the continued drawing of a paycheck?

Regardless of whether you're interested in the recent history of pro hockey in North America (which as of now is in serious jeopardy of mutually assured destruction thanks to its current labor "crisis"), you absolutely MUST read this book if you've ever seen the movie "Slap Shot". Like me, the first thing you'll probably do is look at the pictures (we're hockey fans, after all)...and there they are in all their safety-glassed glory, "The Hanson Brothers" (actually the Carlson brothers) and a very angry-looking young man with a HUGE afro called Bill Goldthorpe ("Ogie" Oglethorpe, as you live and breathe)!

Something like this could have only happened in that decade of bad taste, the 1970's. The "golden age" of rival leagues ran from 1960 through 1980 (you can include the USFL from the mid-'80's if you must) with the AFL (and later the WFL) in football, the ABA in basketball, and the WHA in hockey. You can make the argument that in terms of financial success and impact on the game's established LEAGUE the AFL was the most successful of all of them (with the ABA a close second), but if you know hockey at all, there can be no doubt that the WHA had the most effect on its SPORT.

Without the WHA there would be no interest in expansion to the Deep South (whether even now that is a good idea remains up for debate, but still...), teen-aged players would not be drafted and given the significant ice time that they routinely see today, the free-skating, player salaries would never have reached the competitive (before reaching the unrealistic) level that we see today, European-influenced finesse oriented game ruled the NHL (until those accursed New Jersey Devils did as much to destroy the modern game as the current lockout by winning the Stanley Cup in 1995...after, ironically enough, a prior lockout). The European market would probably remain an untapped market for major league talent even today in North America had it not been for the Winnipeg Jets gambling that Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson had what it took to survive the goonery that made up ALL of North American hockey (well...except the Montreal Canadiens) at the time. The entire decade from 1984-1994 in the NHL might as well never have existed had the WHA not been there to show the way the game should be played.

NHL.com, with the lack of games to cover during the lockout, have taken to staging an all-time fantasy league tournament. As of this writing, one of the final four teams playing are the 1983-84 Edmonton Oilers. These Oilers, including hockey's all-time star Wayne Gretzky and several of that team's core players, were playing in the WHA just five years prior. The renegade league held together by scotch tape and powered by scotch whiskey had the last laugh after all. This book brings it all back to life in a terrifically enjoyable read. Sports used to be fun first, a business second. Re-grow those sideburns, find the ugliest toupee you can, put on the polyester double-knits and enjoy this flashback of a book.