The Jersey Knights were New Jersey’s first pro hockey team. They were established when the New York Golden Blades of the World Hockey Association moved to Cherry Hill, NJ, across the river not from the Big Apple, but Philadelphia. The club moved to San Diego after completing the 1973-74 season.
The Minnesota Fighting Saints were charter members of the World Hockey Association (WHA). They folded midway through the 1975-76 season, only to be reborn when the Cleveland Crusaders moved to the Twin Cities.
The original Winnipeg Jets were charter members of the WHA in 1972. They moved to the NHL in 1979, along with three other WHA squads. In 1995, they were sold and moved to Phoenix for the 1996-97 hockey season. The name was revived when the Atlanta Thrashers moved to Manitoba in 2011 and assumed the Jets name but not their history.
The New England Whalers, later known as the Hartford Whalers, were one of the last two teams to join the brand-new World Hockey Association (WHA) in 1971, but they ended up being one of the most successful clubs in the league, on the ice and at the gate.
The team that would become the Quebec Nordiques began in 1971 as the San Francisco Sharks, a charter member of the WHA. When the new league got skittish on San Francisco, the team was sold to a group of investors from Quebec City.
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