Oh, why not?! NHL Saturday is going to spend a few weeks here looking at the old World Hockey Association and giving out some awards. Like the World Football League of the 1970s, the WHA was kind of a shit show, although it lasted a lot longer than the WFL did, that’s for sure. It actually survived seven seasons before merging four teams into the NHL for the 1979-1980 season. That’s good enough for us!

[We are copying our NHL awards format here: they had different names, of course, in the WHA.]

1973 Gordie Howe Trophy: Bobby Hull, LW, Winnipeg (original); André Lacroix, C, Philadelphia (revised)

Remember, in our original miniseries, we reserved this award for forwards, since defensemen and goaltenders had their own awards. Keeping that in mind, Winnipeg Jets left wing Bobby Hull (1.63 ppg) won the vote here, and he is one of three candidates we have narrowed down, including Philadelphia Blazers center André Lacroix (1.59) and New York Raiders C Ron Ward (1.53). No Point Shares data exists.

First, the Raiders finished with a losing record, so Ward is out. Second, the Blazers barely made the postseason, finishing 14 points behind the Jets in the standings. That inherently makes Lacroix, who topped the WHA in points (124), more valuable than Hull. He was a Philadelphia Flyers and Chicago Black Hawks castoff who found success in the new league during his age-27 season. We will see his name again.

For the record, Hull had been a star for the Chicago Black Hawks, but at age 34, he moved to the WHA: we didn’t start our NHL awards analyses until 1967, and Hull didn’t win any of our awards there. However, he was the Hart vote winner for 1965 and 1966. This will inspire us to do awards analysis for the Original Six Era sometime soon, probably after this WHA miniseries is over. Inspiration comes from everywhere, in the end!

1973 Dennis A. Murphy Trophy: J.C. Tremblay, Quebec (original); Jim Dorey, New England (revised)

After winning five Stanley Cups with the Montréal Canadiens, defenseman J.C. Tremblay jumped to the WHA at age 34 and promptly won this vote by leading the league in assists (75). His only real competition for this award came from New England Whalers blueliner Jim Dorey, who finished with 56 assists and 95 PIMs. Tremblay himself only tallied 32 PIMs, so there’s some balance here for consideration. Dilemmas!

There is the little issue, too, that the Nordiques missed the postseason by three points in the standings, while the Whalers topped the league with the best record. So where is Tremblay’s value? Without complete data to compute PS marks, it’s hard to do a comparison here: Tremblay scored twice as many goals, but he did it for a loser. We’re going to go out on the limb here and give the hardware to Dorey, for value impact.

1973 Ben Hatskin Trophy: Gerry Cheevers, Cleveland (original, confirmed)

Cleveland Crusaders goalie Gerry Cheevers won two Stanley Cups with Boston before jumping to the WHA at age 32. He won the first vote for this award: he posted the best GAA mark in the league (2.84), while topping his peers in shutouts (5), too. He finished second in wins (32), one behind WHA leader Bernie Parent of the Blazers—who coughed up the most goals in the league. This is an open-and-shut decision.

1973 Lou Kaplan Trophy: Terry Caffery, C, New England (original); Norm Beaudin, RW, Winnipeg (revised)

This is a hard award to analyze, since so many players jumped as veterans from the NHL to the WHA. But the vote went to Whalers C Terry Caffery, who had played just 14 NHL games prior to this inaugural season of the new league. Jets right wing Norm Beaudin is the only other contender for this award, as far as we can tell, with just 25 NHL games under his belt before this season. So, it comes down to these two in detail.

Caffery had 100 points for the top team in the league, while Beaudin posted 103 points for the second-place team, just four points in the standings behind New England. We know it’s not just about scoring, though: Caffery edged Beaudin (0.51 to 0.50) in the Goals Created category, the best sabermetric statistic we have to use in these studies. Of course, that’s not much of an edge, and due to the standings? We’re going Beaudin.

1973 WHA Playoff MVP: Jim Dorey, New England

The league didn’t vote on this award for two more postseasons, so we get to wing it on our own. Woohoo! The Whalers won each round of the postseason in five games, posting a 12-3 record overall. The goaltender (Al Smith) didn’t crack a .890 save percentage, so he is out: this will be about the skaters. Five players posted more than a point per game, so that narrows it down a little, since both forwards and blueliners did it here.

By leading the postseason players in assists and PIMs, Dorey is our choice here: his 19 points overall placed fourth on the team, and no other skater led the WHA playoffs in any statistical category as far as we can tell. he was both making passes to facilitate scoring while also doing some serious dirty work. No one else deserves this initial hardware. We’re very comfortable with this choice, and we like the novelty of it all, too.