1979 NHL expansion

The 1979 NHL expansion, popularly referred to as the NHL–WHA merger, was the culmination of several years of negotiations between the National Hockey League (NHL) and the World Hockey Association (WHA). The result of the negotiations was that the WHA folded, and four of its six surviving teams - the Edmonton Oilers, New England Whalers, Quebec Nordiques, and Winnipeg Jets – entered the NHL as expansion teams who commenced play in the NHL in the 1979–80 season. The agreement officially took effect on June 22; it ended the seven-year existence of the WHA and re-established the NHL as the sole major league in North American professional ice hockey.^[1]

The two leagues had discussed the possibility of some sort of amalgamation for numerous years, despite the acrimonious relationship between the two after the WHA aggressively recruited NHL players upon the former's founding in 1971. The two sides came close to an agreement in 1977, but the proposed merger was defeated by a group of hard-line NHL owners. The NHL also initially rejected the 1979 expansion agreement by one vote; however, a massive boycott of Molson products in Canada led the Montreal Canadiens, who were owned by Molson, to reverse their position. In a second vote, in which the Vancouver Canucks also dropped their opposition, the agreement was ratified.

Although popularly called a merger, the NHL refused to recognize the WHA's records or history as being any part of its own. It explicitly treated the arrival of the WHA teams not as a merger, but rather as an expansion consisting of four new teams which happened to have identical or similar names to some of the former WHA teams. Notably, and in stark contrast to amalgamations consummated within the preceding decade in American football and basketball, the existing NHL teams were allowed to reclaim players to which they held NHL "rights" from the former WHA clubs without compensation, with the caveat that each of the new NHL franchises were permitted to protect two goaltenders and two skaters on their WHA rosters.

An expansion draft was held to stock the WHA refugees' NHL rosters. The expansion teams were also placed at the end of the draft order for the 1979 NHL entry draft, as opposed to typical expansion drafts in North American sports leagues, which usually place the expansion teams at or very near the front of the draft order.