History
The Toros had been modestly successful on the ice since moving from Toronto, and had drawn fairly well by NHL standards. However, onerous lease terms at Maple Leaf Gardens led owner John Bassett to move to Birming ham.
John Brophy, who would later go on to coach the Leafs, joined head coach Glen Sonmor as an assistant after the move to Birmingham. Brophy became head coach in the 1978–79 when Sonmor joined the Minnesota North Stars. His team finished last in the league, but was in the middle of a youth movement.
Wayne Gretzky was heavily recruited by Birmingham Bulls owner John Bassett to be part of the youth movement. Bassett wanted to confront the NHL by signing as many young and promising superstars as possible and saw Gretzky as the most promising young prospect.
Although Bassett failed to sign Gretzky, the Bulls (affectionately known as the Baby Bulls) included several future NHL stars at the beginning of their professional careers (Rick Vaive, Michel Goulet, Rob Ramage, Pat Riggin, Craig Hartsburg, and Gaston Gingras), as well as a 36-year-old Paul Henderson. Even though his team was the only one in the league not to make the playoffs, Brophy was awarded the Robert Schmertz Memorial Trophy as the WHA's coach of the year.
Read more about this topic: Birmingham Bulls
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“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)