On Frozen Blog

Highlights from The Rebel League: The Short and Unruly Life of the World Hockey Association, by Ed Willes:

On the distinctive rink environments WHA teams competed in –

“The [Edmonton] Oilers played their first couple of seasons in the Edmonton Garden, which featured a three-tiered players’ bench. When players came off the ice they would climb up to the third tier, then move their way down to the lower rungs as their next shift approached. In theory that worked fine, but if someone lost their place or coaches were trying to match lines on the fly, ‘all hell could break loose,’ says [Harry[ Neale, who adds, 'The other beauty of Edmonton was you could watch the game from the best seat in the house if you were benched.'"

"Like a number of old WHA rinks, the Cleveland Arena featured chicken wire instead of Plexiglass. As every WHA player knew, chicken wire had two distinct advantages: (1) You could pour beer through it, and (2) it produced some strange bounces . . . 'There were two standard lines when you were getting beer dumped on you,' [Paul] Shmyr says. ‘The first one was, “If you’re going to pour beer on me at least hit me in the mouth.” The second one was, ‘Hey, that isn’t my brand.’”

On a coach’s instilling player discipline:

“‘We’re at our [training] camp in Roanoke, Virginia, and I’ve got to make a speech,’ [Johnny] McKenzie says. ‘I said we don’t have a lot of rules here. We’re in by 11:00. We wear jackets to restaurants. And if you get any girls after 11:00, you have to send them down to the coach. Big joke, right? The first night, there’s a knock on the door and it’s two guys with these two girls. “We’re finished with them, coach.”

On Mr. Hockey:

“Gordie had a sit-down with [Bill] Dineen and told the coach of his fears. The [Houston] Aeros were about to start two-a-days, and Dineen told Howe he could join the team for just one of the sessions. Howe pondered this, then said, no, he’d always been a team player. Either he was in or he was out.

‘I figured the two-a-days would either kill me or make me,’ Howe says. ‘And the minute we started them it was like I’d never been off the ice . . .’

They were astounded at what they witnessed . . . He started the season modestly with 18 points after the first fifteen games, but two months later he was fourth in the league in scoring, and by the end of February led all scorers with 84 points in fifty-nine games. He would finish the year with 31 goals and 100 points in seventy games and was named the league’s MVP as the Aeros waltzed to the Avco Cup.

‘He was, hands down, the best player in the league in the first year and one of the three or four best in the second,’ says Mark [Howe].’To do the things at his age was just amazing, and I got to watch it every day.’

The boys had obviously followed their father’s career in Detroit, but it was one thing to watch him through the worshipful eyes of a child and another thing to watch him as a teammate. From their front-row seat with the Aeros, they witnessed one of the greatest comebacks in sports history.