San Diego Mariners

Lore & Background

The San Diego Mariners originated as the New York Raiders, New York Golden Blades, and Jersey Knights before relocating to San Diego. They qualified for the WHA playoffs each year of their existence, coached first by player-coach Harry Howell and then by Ron Ingram. Star players included defenseman Harry Howell, center Andre Lacroix, and goaltender Ernie Wakely.

Late in the Mariners' second season in 1975–76, owner Joseph Schwartz defaulted on paying players' salaries and league assessments, leading the league to take over the team. In August 1976, McDonald's and San Diego Padres owner Ray Kroc purchased the team for $450,000. During the final WHA season in 1976–77, the team never drew well, attracting only 5,000 fans per game.

Kroc sold the team to a group planning to move it to Melbourne, Florida, but no suitable arena was found. The team was then sold to former Philadelphia Flyers minority owner Bill Putnam, who renamed it the Florida Breakers and planned to play at the Hollywood Sportatorium in Hollywood, Florida. After that deal fell apart, Jerry Saperstein tried to buy the team and move it to the same area as the Florida Icegators. All three attempts to move the team to Florida failed, and the Mariners folded just before training camp in fall 1977. Fans who put down deposits for season tickets never got their money back.

Reader's Guide

The San Diego Mariners are notable as a WHA franchise that underwent multiple relocations and name changes before settling in San Diego, only to fold after three failed attempts to move to Florida. Their history illustrates the instability of the WHA and the challenges of establishing professional hockey in non-traditional markets. The team's colors, orange and blue, matched those of the earlier San Diego Gulls of the Western Hockey League and were later used as throwback jerseys by the now-defunct WCHL/ECHL San Diego Gulls. After the WHA Mariners folded, the team name was reused by an unrelated franchise in the low-level Pacific Hockey League (PHL), founded by San Diego Sports Arena operator Peter Graham. That PHL team was later sold and renamed the San Diego Hawks. The last Mariners player active in major professional hockey was Kevin Devine, who played his last NHL game in 1982–83. Ron Plumb was the last active player, retiring in 1986 after playing in England. Mariners' draft pick Don Edwards played in the NHL until 1986 but never played in the WHA.

Did You Know?

• Owner Joseph Schwartz defaulted on player salaries and league assessments late in the 1975–76 season, leading the league to take over the team.
• Three separate attempts to move the team to Florida all failed before the Mariners folded in fall 1977.

A Brief Tenure in the World Hockey Association

The San Diego Mariners existed for a relatively short span, competing in the World Hockey Association from 1974 through 1977. During those three seasons, the Mariners represented San Diego in a professional hockey league that operated independently from the National Hockey League. The WHA was a separate entity with its own identity, and the Mariners were one of its member franchises during the league's final years. The league itself would not survive long after the Mariners' departure; the WHA is now defunct, having been absorbed into the NHL through the 1979 merger. This means the Mariners played their entire existence in a league that no longer exists, and they never carried their franchise into the post-merger NHL landscape. For San Diego fans in the mid-1970s, the Mariners offered a professional hockey experience at a time when the city had no NHL representation, filling a gap in the local sports calendar that would remain unfilled for decades afterward.

San Diego's Only Hockey Chapter

The San Diego Mariners hold a unique place in the city's sports history as its only professional hockey team to compete at a major league level. The city has never hosted a National Hockey League franchise, making the Mariners' three-year run in the World Hockey Association from 1974 to 1977 the closest San Diego has come to top-tier professional hockey. Before the Mariners arrived, local sports promoter Robert Breitbard had already established a hockey presence in the area through the San Diego Gulls, a franchise in the Western Hockey League. The Gulls represented an earlier attempt to bring professional ice hockey to the region, though they operated in a different league entirely. After the Mariners' tenure ended in 1977 and the WHA dissolved following the 1979 merger with the NHL, San Diego went without any professional hockey representation. The Mariners thus stand as a singular chapter—a brief window in which the city could claim a major-league hockey team, a distinction it has not held before or since.

The Curse of San Diego Sports

San Diego sports fans have long grappled with a pattern that feels almost supernatural: the city's repeated inability to retain professional teams or capture championships in the major leagues. The Mariners, who played in the WHA from 1974 to 1977, are part of a broader roster of franchises that came and went—joining the Chargers (1961–2017), the Rockets (1967–1971), the Clippers (1978–1984), and the Conquistadors (1972–1975). The city's only major league title remains the 1963 AFL Championship, won by the Chargers before the AFL merged with the NFL in 1970. San Diego is the largest American city without a championship in any of the "Big Four" major professional leagues. This combination of lost teams and a decades-long title drought has led some fans to believe a curse haunts professional sports in the city. The Mariners, whose league simply ceased to exist, add another layer to that narrative of impermanence.

Between the Gulls and the Merger

The story of professional hockey in San Diego is one of near-misses and short-lived ventures, with the Mariners occupying a narrow window in the timeline. Robert Breitbard, the local sports booster who would later found the NBA's San Diego Rockets, first brought hockey to the region through the San Diego Gulls in the Western Hockey League. He also developed the San Diego Sports Arena, which became a central venue for the city's professional teams. The Mariners then arrived in 1974 to play in the World Hockey Association, a league that operated as a rival to the NHL. However, the WHA's existence was finite. The 1979 NHL-WHA merger brought the league to an end, and the Mariners' three seasons (1974–1977) concluded before that final consolidation. The result is that San Diego's hockey history is fragmented: a WHL team, a brief WHA stint, and then silence. No NHL franchise ever took root, leaving the Mariners as the city's most significant professional hockey memory.

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