The

World Hockey Association The World Hockey Association (french: Association mondiale de hockey) was a professional ice hockey major league that operated in North America from 1972 to 1979. It was the first major league to compete with the National Hockey League (NHL) ...

(WHA) operated for seven

seasons A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and pola ...

from 1972 until 1979. The WHA ceased operations after the 1978–79 season. As part of the

NHL-WHA merger The 1979 NHL expansion was the culmination of several years of negotiations between the National Hockey League (NHL) and the World Hockey Association (WHA) that resulted in the WHA and its six surviving franchises folding in return for the owners ...

, four WHA franchises moved to the

National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

for the

1979–80 NHL season The 1979–80 NHL season was the 63rd season of the National Hockey League. This season saw the addition of four teams from the disbanded World Hockey Association as expansion franchises. The Edmonton Oilers, Winnipeg Jets, New England Whalers (l ...

: Edmonton, New England (renamed Hartford Whalers), Quebec, and Winnipeg. The other two WHA-enfranchised teams, Birmingham and Cincinnati, folded.

See also