A Lost Opportunity
October 14, 2022
Last weekend, the 50th anniversary WHA reunion took place as scheduled in Whistler. Those who were there undoubtedly shared many stories and laughs.
But the big story wasn’t who was there.
It was who wasn’t.
Despite heavily promoting the event for nearly a full year and taking out ads in The Hockey News, they couldn’t even get 30 players out. Three of their own committee members didn’t show. The Hansons along with the cast and crew of Slap Shot were supposed to be there, yet all they got was Dave Hanson and the guy who played Johnny Upton. They hyped the golf day with LPGA star Helen Alfredsson and her husband, former WHA Jet Kent Nilsson. Neither of them showed. (But hey, they did get some pretty little sales rep from a vodka company!) At the legacy dinner, they had planned to honor Bobby Hull, Alton White, Andre Lacroix and Henry Boucha. The latter two didn’t show either. Why White and Boucha were being honored at all is a topic for discussion in itself. Yours truly believes players should be honored solely for their accomplishments on the ice. The organizers felt otherwise. But I digress.
And a lot of fans like me didn’t show either.
All because they made such a horrible decision as to where to hold the reunion. Whistler. Scenic vistas, yes. But it’s one of the most remote, exclusive and expensive destinations in the country. Clearly, the organizers gave little thought to picking the venue besides, “Hey, Whistler sounds great!” Short of a place like Whitehorse or Yellowknife, they couldn’t have made a poorer choice.
It was grossly unfair to ask players whose median age is somewhere in the mid-70s to travel to such a distant part of the world. It was even more unfair to ask would-be attendees to cover the enormous costs. Air fare. Hotels. Meals. Incidentals. As one of the attendees put it, the best way to make a small fortune in Whistler is to start with a large fortune. And if all that wasn’t enough, there were the exorbitant fees for each of the events. Shelling out such large amounts of money is a lot to ask of anyone, let alone a bunch of regular guys. This was not an executive retreat for a Fortune 500 company with an unlimited budget.
After their introductory announcement last November, they stated that they didn’t want to pick one major WHA city over another. So they chose none of them. By trying to be inclusive, they did the exact opposite. Leaving many players unable to get together with their teammates and legions of fans unable to share the moment with them for what was probably the last time. An opportunity lost. You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression and you don’t get a second chance to do a 50th anniversary reunion.
By all accounts, those who were there had a great time.
But the silence of those who weren’t there was deafening.
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