The original Winnipeg Jets changed professional hockey twice: once by signing Bobby Hull, and once by proving European players could dominate North American hockey.
Then they moved to Arizona.
Bobby Hull and the Million-Dollar Contract
In 1972 the World Hockey Association was a startup league with no credibility, no television deal, and no stars. It needed a name that would force the hockey world to take it seriously.
The Winnipeg Jets delivered it.
Bobby Hull was the most exciting player in the NHL, the Golden Jet, a Chicago Black Hawks legend with the hardest shot in hockey. The Jets offered him a ten-year contract worth $1.75 million, including a $1 million signing bonus paid up front. Every WHA team contributed to the bonus because all of them understood that Hull's signature was the difference between a league and a joke.
Hull signed on June 27, 1972, at a ceremony in Winnipeg. It was, at the time, the largest contract in the history of team sports.
The signing legitimized the WHA overnight. It also fundamentally altered NHL economics, because suddenly there was a competitor bidding for talent, and salaries across professional hockey rose dramatically. Every player who has ever signed a large hockey contract owes something to what happened in Winnipeg in 1972.
The Swedish Revolution
The Jets' second and arguably larger contribution was demonstrating that European hockey players belonged at the highest level.
In 1974 the Jets signed Swedish stars Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson. At the time, the conventional North American wisdom was that Europeans were too soft, too small, and too unwilling to play a physical game.
Hedberg and Nilsson, playing on a line with Bobby Hull, destroyed that assumption. The line was the most dominant in the WHA. Hedberg scored 50 goals in 49 games in 1976-77. Nilsson was a brilliant playmaker. Their skill, speed, and passing were on a level North American hockey had not seen.
The Jets won three Avco Cups as WHA champions: 1976, 1978, and 1979. The 1978-79 team is widely considered the best in WHA history.
When Hedberg and Nilsson signed with the New York Rangers in 1978 for enormous contracts, the door for European players in North American hockey was permanently open.
Into the NHL
When the WHA folded in 1979, the Jets were one of four teams absorbed into the NHL, along with Edmonton, Quebec, and Hartford.
The absorption terms were brutal. The WHA teams were required to give up most of their rosters in a reclamation draft that allowed NHL teams to take back players. The Jets, who had the best team in the WHA, were stripped nearly bare.
They went 20-49-11 in their first NHL season and 9-57-14 in their second, one of the worst seasons in NHL history.
Then they drafted Dale Hawerchuk first overall in 1981. Hawerchuk won the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year, scored 100 points in his first season at age 18, and became one of the great centers of the 1980s. The Jets improved by 48 points in one season, at the time the largest single-season improvement in NHL history.
The Whiteout and Teemu Selanne
Two things defined the Jets' NHL era beyond Hawerchuk.
**Teemu Selanne.** In 1992-93, the Finnish Flash scored 76 goals as a rookie, shattering the NHL rookie goal record (previously 53) by 23 goals. It is a record that will almost certainly never be broken. He added 56 assists for 132 points, also a rookie record. Selanne's rookie season is one of the single greatest individual seasons in NHL history and it happened in Winnipeg.
**The Winnipeg Whiteout.** During the 1987 playoffs, Jets fans were encouraged to wear white to counter the Calgary Flames' Red Mile. The result was an arena where every single seat was filled with a person dressed entirely in white, creating a visual that became one of the most famous traditions in hockey. The Whiteout has been revived by the current Jets and remains one of the best atmospheres in sports.
The Move
The Jets' problem was arithmetic. The Winnipeg Arena held 15,500. The Canadian dollar was worth roughly 70 cents US, meaning the Jets earned Canadian revenue and paid US-denominated salaries. NHL salaries were escalating rapidly through the mid-1990s.
A grassroots campaign called Operation Grassroots raised millions from ordinary Winnipeggers trying to save the team. It was not enough, and government funding for a new arena did not materialize.
The final game was played on April 28, 1996, a 4-1 playoff loss to Detroit. Fans stayed in the building for close to an hour afterward. Many were openly weeping. The team moved to Phoenix and became the Coyotes.
Fifteen years later, in 2011, the Atlanta Thrashers relocated to Winnipeg and the Jets name returned. Season tickets sold out in 17 minutes.
The Legacy
**Bobby Hull's contract reshaped hockey economics.** Every big contract in hockey history descends from Winnipeg's 1972 gamble.
**Hedberg and Nilsson opened the NHL to Europe.** The globalization of hockey has a specific starting point, and it is a Winnipeg Jets forward line.
**Selanne's 76 goals will never be broken.** The single most untouchable rookie record in hockey belongs to the original Jets.
**The Whiteout is immortal.** It came back with the team, and it is still the best playoff atmosphere in the league.
Twenty-four seasons. Three WHA championships. One rookie record for the ages. And a team that eventually came home.
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