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Sunday, November 2, 1997 What a league! By KERRY DIOTTE Edmonton Sun   This year is the 25th anniversary of the founding of the World Hockey Association, a wild and wooly maverick league that helped put our city on the map.   The Alberta Oilers were one of the original teams in the now-defunct league and it's hardly a stretch to say our city wouldn't have an NHL team if it weren't for the WHA - a circuit spearheaded by two Californians.   "Those were really exciting times because the National Hockey League had consistently snubbed Edmonton," says Bill Tuele, who covered the upstart WHA Oilers as a radio sports director with CFCW before joining the team as a spokesman after it was in the NHL.   One league pioneer, "Wild" Bill Hunter, was largely responsible for building the excitement, says Tuele. "I remember a news conference where we were all there expecting to hear about the Oilers first big name signing.   "Bill had hyped the announcement up like it was going to be Bobby Hull and it turned out to be Roger Cote, who was respectable, but wasn't any Hull."   The Alberta Oilers club was quickly renamed the Edmonton Oilers and played in the WHA until the league folded in 1979. That fall, Edmonton, Quebec, Winnipeg and Hartford were absorbed into the NHL.   Author Murray Greig - who's just completed a book on the league called Big Bucks & Blue Pucks - agrees our city would never have seen an NHL team had it not been for the maverick pro league, but also points out the WHA was significant for other key reasons.   "It challenged and defeated the reserve clause in professional hockey which had bound players for life to NHL owners," says Greig, a former Edmonton Sun staffer now living in Trail, B.C.   "And it led the way in scouting and recruiting of European players which changed the game for all time."   Edmontonian Cam Connor recalls the WHA as a raw, rollicking, rough league that sometimes seemed like the 1977 movie Slap Shot come to life.   Today, Connor, 43, is in the computer consulting business as branch manager with DKW Systems. In those days, he was often as not dealing with chips too - guys who had big chips on their shoulders.   "WHA teams would have three, four or five guys who did nothing but fight," says Connor, who'd been a first-round draft pick of the Montreal Canadiens in 1974 but opted to begin his pro career in the upstart league, playing for Phoenix and then Houston. When the Aeros folded, he wound up with the Montreal Canadiens before joining the NHL Oilers in that team's first NHL season.   He remembers the Minnesota Fighting Saints as having the largest collection of pure pugilists.   "They had these Carlson brothers who couldn't skate the length of the ice without falling down, although I think they got better later," chuckles Connor of the siblings.   Two of the three Carlsons actually played the part of hockey goons in the movie Slap Shot. They, along with WHA player Dave Hanson, starred in the flick as the rock 'em, sock 'em Hanson brothers. "And Minnesota also had Curt Brackenbury, Gord Gallant, Paul Holmgren and Johnny McKenzie. It was a tough lineup."   Whenever another team came into Minnesota's rink, violence was a given and fans clamored to see the brawls, says Connor, who remembers tangling with Dave Semenko in the burly one's first WHA fight. He chuckles about that and points to a newspaper photo he kept that shows him on top of Semenko after that brawl.   "One night, the Saints had 19,000 fans in their rink and only 6,000 across town to see the North Stars play the Stanley Cup champion Montreal Canadiens."   Connor chose to return to Edmonton from New York in 1988, feeling Alberta had the best business opportunities.   He admits he had a lot of fun in the WHA, but in some way regrets not beginning his career with the Canadiens since he later learned how good the organization was.   Original WHA Oiler Al Hamilton - who's now a marketing manager in town - remembers the league fondly not only for the better bucks players made, but also for the cast of characters who suited up.   "My salary tripled from what I'd been getting with the Buffalo Sabres at the time," says Hamilton, who got paid $100,000 as a WHA Oiler compared to $30,000 as a Sabre.   Despite the new-found wealth, Hamilton admitted he had misgivings almost immediately after signing.   "The first game I played for (the Oilers) took about five hours to play. There were about 300 minutes in penalties and I thought, 'What the hell have I gotten myself into?'   "The league settled down later but there were always lots of characters like Derek Sanderson, who made sure every bar in every city flourished. He threw the money around pretty well.   "And the Minnesota Fighting Saints had a lineup that fought so much the safest thing on the ice was the puck."   Outside of the bigger dollars, Hamilton recalls there were some cheesy aspects of the upstart league you were forced to grin and bear.   Road trips would last up to three weeks to save money travelling back home, and for a time, teams playing the Philadelphia Blazers had to suit up at a hotel because there was no dressing room at the rink.   Connor, too, recalls some franchises were so shaky players worried that they might not get paid week to week.   "Guys in Minnesota would sneak out in the middle of practice to cash their cheques," says Connor.   "If you were one of the first 10 at the bank, you knew you'd get paid."   Oilers WHA goalie Ken Brown admits cost-saving measures sometimes caused problems (such as when the team arrived hours late for a game in New York because management wouldn't book hotels in the pricey city) but players were generally well-paid and well-treated.   What's more, the league gave many good athletes a chance to play major professional hockey which they might not have gotten in the NHL.   Brown once belonged to the Chicago Blackhawks organization which had Tony Esposito and Gerry Desjardins as the team's goalies, so coming to the WHA Oilers was an easy decision he's never regretted.   "The first year here I had Glenn Hall as my goaltending coach, which was amazing since he'd been my hero," says Brown, now advertising director for The Edmonton Sun.   To top it off, he got to learn from Jacques Plante, who was Brown's goaltending partner in '74-'75. "He was just outstanding - even though he was 46 then," says Brown.   Edmontonian Tom Gilmore - who runs an office wall manufacturing company called Partition Systems - came to the WHA Oilers at age 24, largely to escape the rat race in Los Angeles, where he played for the Sharks, and because he missed being in a hockey-crazed town.   "L.A.'s not conducive to hockey. All athletes have an ego and at that age we want to be recognized.   "You could walk down the street in L.A. and nobody would know you, but you come to a hockey town like Edmonton and you're a hero."   Overall, however, the WHA was nothing to sneer at, say the players who had careers in the circuit. Toward the end, it was as good in quality as any league on earth.   Greig concurs.   "By the mid-'70s, the Winnipeg Jets were as good or better than any NHL team outside of Boston or Montreal.   "The WHA had some top former NHL players like Bobby Hull, Gordie Howe, J.C. Tremblay and there was real parity in the league.   "And a lot of fans forget that when teams from the two leagues played against one another from 1974 to 1978, the WHA teams won 33, lost 27 and tied seven.   "For people to dismiss the league as weaker is ludicrous."   Minnesota Fighting Saints The Minnesota Fighting Saints Reviewed by Bobby Bryde, the editor-in-chief of HockeyMeister.com. "The Fighting Saints," said Howard Baldwin, "They lived up to their name!" In 1972 the Minnesota Fighting Saints were an original entry of the World Hockey Association and offered a fun alternative to fans that were disappointed in the North Stars. Matt Hoover, the coordinating producer at FSN north, was a young season ticket holder in the early 1970s. "A lot of us decided to go to WHA games instead of watching a bad North Stars team." However, not many fans in Minnesota remember the Saints, and Hoover thought a short documentary would be a "little history lesson for those in the upper mid-west who may not have known there was a team in the 70s." Dan Ammann (vintagevideos.com) has seen many WHA documentaries, and calls this one 'terrific.' "There were a lot of good stories," said Dan, "and I know finding WHA footage is tough. Most has been destroyed." Finding game footage was indeed a challenge. "Most [footage] came from highlight films the team produced," said Paul Hipp, producer. His biggest problem was condensing 150 interviews to the 40 to 50 that ended up in the 23-minute documentary. "The Saints were a colorful team, and we ended up with so many quotes and sound bites. Most former players were pretty cooperative and they still have a sense of pride of playing for the team." The six weeks it took to produce the video was worthwhile. The WHA knew it had to 'entertain' the fans and in 1975-76, the Saints almost outdrew the rival North Stars, averaging 8,396 fans per game, to the North Stars 9,655. Glen Sonmor, the Saints General Manager, says, "They did a great job putting it together. It brought back nice memories, and it was great listening to the crazy stories." Mike Walton, who led the WHA in scoring in 1973-74, was a star of the Saints and when the Carlson Brothers (focus of the film "Slap Shot") arrived, they emphasized the "fighting" in Fighting Saints! The most memorable part of the film is the playoff game in Hartford on April 11, 1975. A 32 minute melee occurred early in the second period. Fans who sat through the almost four hour game (setting eight WHA records for penalty minutes) never forgot the violence. "Nick Fotiu [Whalers] was considered the undisputed champion of the league," said Glen Sonmor. "But Jack Carlson annihilated him. That was a big factor in the series." "The fight went on forever," said Howard Baldwin, then President of the Whalers. "We sat right behind the bench and watched in horror - but it was a great brawl!" Unfortunately, the Saints folded in February, 1976. But for those in Minnesota who want to skate down memory lane, Fox Sports North will re-broadcast "The Minnesota Fighting Saints" again on Wednesday, March 30, 6:30 CST. I strongly advise setting the VCR. Article taken from insidehockey.com