So the WHA has announced that its inaugural season will begin on October 29th, 2004 with six teams and possibly more including Halifax, Quebec, Detroit, Dallas, Orlando and Jacksonville. The season is set to open up a mere 2 days before Halloween, I wonder what they’ll dress up as, a legitimate hockey league that expects to be taken seriously as a replacement for the possibly-in-shambles NHL? Get real. Maybe Spike TV will pick it up and air it sometime after Slam-Ball and before WWE. All jokes aside (come on, they’d OBVIOUSLY air it between Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space 9 to catch their target demographic), the WH-GAY may actually experience some short-term success if the NHL, as it more than likely will, goes into a lockout after the current CBA expires on September 12th, 2004.

With no red line, no-touch icing, touch-up offside, and a 3 on 3 overtime that ends up in a shootout if there’s no score, the WHA has basically just taken every rule that the NHL has been thinking about changing, changed them and began doing CPR on a league that died 25 years ago. The fact that the big wigs of this league honestly believe that they will take over where the NHL left off makes me wonder if there may have been a baby-dropping contest back in the 50’s or 60’s that their parents all tied for first place in.

The success of the WHA back in it’s glory days came in large part from the league getting Gordie Howe to come out of retirement to play for the Houston Aeros on a line with his sons, and with recently elected member of the Hockey Hall of Fame Ray Bourque’s son Chris, going into his freshman year at Boston University and expected to go high in the June 26th 2004 NHL Entry Draft (also the birthday of the legendary Jim Kerr), should he expect a phone call?

On that note, congratulations to Ray Bourque, Paul Coffey, Larry Murphy and Cliff Fletcher who were all elected for induction into the Hall of Fame on Wednesday. Way to be fellas and I hope, for your sake, that Bobby Hull has lost all of your phone numbers. FINAL THOUGHT: GO DELI CINQ

MORAL OF THE STORY: Check back with me in a few years on this one but the eventual moral of this story is that when you take advantage of someone in a vulnerable situation, someone either gets pregnant, or the league that you try to replace gets it’s shit together, packs you into a little ball and tosses you into it’s lip…and then spits you out. Again.