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To: Don W
Here's the story that I always found to be the most interesting angle of the NHL-WHA merger ...

One of the more complicated issues was the status of the players who were under contract with WHA teams at the time of the merger. As part of the merger agreement, the NHL and WHA agreed to the following:

1. Any WHA players whose rights were held by NHL teams (if they had been previously drafted by both a WHA team and an NHL team and had signed with the WHA team, for example) would be given back to the NHL teams who owned their rights.

2. Notwithstanding this agreement, the four incoming WHA teams were allowed to protect four players (two goalies and two skaters) for themselves.

3. Each of the existing NHL teams protected 15 skaters and 2 goalies. All of the unprotected WHA and NHL players went through an expansion draft to fill the four new WHA-NHL teams.

4. After the expansion draft in June 1979, the NHL then went through its regular entry draft in August.

Wayne Gretzky had never been drafted by an NHL team because he was signed to play for the WHA's Indianapolis Racers (which later became the Edmonton Oilers) as a 17 year-old. The NHL didn't allow players younger than 20 to be drafted. For the 1979 entry draft the NHL reduced the minimum age from 20 to 18 to let NHL teams absorb these WHA players younger than 20. Wayne Gretzky would certainly have been the #1 pick in the draft, but a special arrangement was made for him because he never signed a WHA player contract. Instead, he had a 21-year personal services agreement with Oilers owner Peter Pocklington, and because he didn't want to play for the sad-sack Colorado Rockies (who held the #1 pick in the draft), he refused to cancel the contract. This created a dilemma for the merger, so the NHL teams and the Edmonton Oilers came up with an agreement that would allow the Oilers to keep Gretzky, but in exchange they would agree to be placed in the last spot in the 1979 NHL entry draft order.

The Gretzky contract situation was so unique that it would later present a number of challenges to the Edmonton Oilers, and would lead to series of events that culminated in his trade to the Los Angeles Kings in 1988.

89 posted on 01/13/2017 7:31:48 AM PST by Alberta's Child ("Yo, bartender -- Jobu needs a refill!")
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To: Alberta's Child

The late DC sports host Ken Beatrice used to say, “If Wayne Gretzky can be traded, anyone can be traded.”


118 posted on 01/16/2017 10:44:55 AM PST by TBP (0bama lies, Granny dies.)
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