New York Raiders (WHA)

Lore & Background

The New York Raiders were initially slated to play in the brand-new Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Long Island, but Nassau County officials did not consider the WHA to be a major league and instead worked to secure an NHL team for the building. The Raiders were forced to play at Madison Square Garden as tenants of the New York Rangers under an onerous lease, averaging only 5,868 spectators per game compared to the Rangers' 17,494 and the Islanders' 11,996. The three original owners defaulted, and the WHA took control of the team midway through the inaugural season.

For the second season, real estate mogul Ralph Brent bought the team and renamed it the New York Golden Blades, adopting purple and gold uniforms and white skates with gold-colored blades. The team acquired Andre Lacroix but continued to struggle, playing before crowds as small as 500 in an 18,000-seat arena. Brent returned the team to the league after 20 games with a 6–12–2 record. Veteran player Harry Howell was elevated to player-coach and ordered the white skates painted black.

The WHA moved the team to Cherry Hill, New Jersey, on November 21, 1973, renaming it the Jersey Knights. The new home, Cherry Hill Arena, had a sloped ice surface that forced visiting teams to skate uphill two out of three periods, and pucks would sometimes shoot upwards unexpectedly. The arena lacked plexiglass, using chicken-wire protection in some areas, and had cramped facilities where visiting teams had to dress at their hotel. Despite these conditions, the Knights played over-.500 hockey and were in playoff contention before losing their last six games to finish 32–42–4, last in the Eastern Division.

Reader's Guide

The New York Raiders franchise is notable as a cautionary example of the WHA's struggle to compete with the established NHL in major markets. Despite being a charter franchise intended as the league's flagship, the team was unable to secure a suitable home arena, first being locked out of the Nassau Coliseum by county officials who deemed the WHA not a major league, then forced into an unfavorable lease at Madison Square Garden. The franchise's rapid decline—from the Raiders to the Golden Blades to the Jersey Knights in less than two seasons—illustrates the financial instability and organizational chaos that plagued many WHA teams. The move to Cherry Hill Arena, with its famously poor ice surface and inadequate facilities, became a symbol of the league's lower-tier status. The WHA never returned to New York after this franchise left, getting no closer than the New England Whalers' move to Hartford in 1975. The team's legacy includes the last active player from the franchise, Bobby Sheehan, who played in the NHL until 1981–82 and in the AHL until 1983.

Did You Know?

• The Raiders had the second overall pick in the first WHA Draft in 1972, selecting Al Sims, who signed with the Boston Bruins instead.
• The Golden Blades started the season wearing white skates with gold-colored blades, which player-coach Harry Howell ordered painted black.
• The press box at Cherry Hill Arena was so small that the radio voice of the Edmonton Oilers said you couldn't stand up, with a roof only four feet high.

A Second Team in a Saturated City

The New York Raiders were announced on November 1, 1971, as one of the original twelve franchises of the World Hockey Association. Unlike clubs planted in cities entirely devoid of major hockey, the Raiders represented a different strategic wager: the league's promoters, Dennis Murphy and Gary Davidson—both veterans of the American Basketball Association—believed New York had enough market depth to sustain more than one professional hockey club. Each franchise owner paid a $25,000 fee for their team, a modest entry cost reflecting the experimental nature of the venture. By the time the league launched in 1972, the Raiders were part of a ten-team field after two of the original twelve had relocated and two had folded outright, replaced by new entrants in Philadelphia and Cleveland. The Raiders thus entered a league still reshaping its own identity in real time, competing not only against the NHL but against the internal turbulence of a startup trying to prove it could sustain a full competitive season.

Playing in a League That Rewrote the Rules

The Raiders competed in a league whose founding philosophy centered on dismantling the NHL's reserve clause, a provision that had bound players to their teams for life even after contracts expired. The WHA publicly declared that this clause would not survive scrutiny from players, Congress, the public, or the courts. The league also promised salaries well above the NHL's 1972 average of $25,000, the lowest among the four major North American sports. That combination attracted sixty-seven former NHL players in the first year alone, headlined by Bobby Hull's record-setting ten-year, $2.7 million deal with Winnipeg. Judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. ultimately sided with the WHA in November 1972, enjoining the NHL from enforcing the reserve clause and freeing players to play freely. For the Raiders, this meant competing in a talent pool that was genuinely open for the first time in decades, though it also meant every roster was in flux as players followed money and freedom across league lines.

Surviving a League at War with Itself

The WHA was described as chronically unstable, with franchises occasionally relocating or folding mid-season. The Raiders existed within this volatile environment, where the league's very survival was uncertain from year to year. The relationship with the NHL was acrimonious, producing numerous legal battles over player rights and market control. The Black Hawks, for instance, successfully obtained a restraining order against Bobby Hull before the courts ultimately ruled in the WHA's favor, while the Boston Bruins attempted to block players from defecting but were refused by a federal court. These legal skirmishes, combined with the constant threat of franchise collapse, created a competitive landscape where the Raiders and their fellow WHA clubs had to prove their viability season after season. The league's instability was not merely a footnote; it was a structural reality that shaped every roster decision, every scheduling conflict, and every business judgment the Raiders' ownership made during their tenure in the association.

The Merger That Ended Everything

Despite the hostility between the two leagues, merger talks began almost immediately after the WHA's founding. In 1977, NHL owners voted down a plan that would have absorbed six WHA teams into the NHL. However, by 1979, a merger was finally approved. The final WHA game was played on May 20, 1979, when the Winnipeg Jets defeated the Edmonton Oilers to claim their third Avco World Trophy. After that season, the WHA ceased operations entirely. Four teams—the Edmonton Oilers, the New England Whalers (renamed Hartford and later relocated to Raleigh as the Carolina Hurricanes), the Quebec Nordiques (eventually moving to Denver and then Phoenix), and the Winnipeg Jets (who moved to Phoenix)—joined the NHL for the 1979–80 season. The New York Raiders were not among those four survivors. Their story ended with the league's dissolution, a fate shared by other WHA franchises that did not make the cut for the NHL's expanded roster.

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