Jets Inaugural Game vs Canadiens, 1972

Lore & Background

Winnipeg had been a hockey town since the early 1900s, but the NHL had passed the city over for decades. When the World Hockey Association announced in 1971 that it would launch a rival league for the 1972–73 season, Winnipeg's bid was successful. The team was quickly branded the Jets, a name that evoked speed and forward momentum, and the team played its home games at the Winnipeg Arena—where its first game was held. The choice of the New York Raiders as the opening opponent was a fitting start for a league trying to establish itself in big markets. Facing them at home in Game 1 was both a daunting test and a symbolic statement: the new club was entering a league determined to challenge the NHL's dominance. The crowd that packed the Winnipeg Arena on that October evening was a mix of curious locals, hockey purists, and skeptics who wondered whether the WHA could truly survive. The game ended in a Jets win, 6-4, a thrilling start that defied expectations. But the night was not defined by the final score alone. It was defined by the first Jets goal, the first Jets save, the first time a local broadcaster called a Jets play on the radio, and the collective exhale of a community that had finally, after years of waiting, belonged to the WHA. The franchise would endure, struggle, and eventually triumph, but every one of those chapters traced back to that first, nervous, electric night in Winnipeg.

In Their Own Story

The lights in the Winnipeg Arena hummed with a particular quality that night—fluorescent tubes buzzing above a sea of wool coats and scarves, the smell of hot dogs and cold concrete mixing with the sharp bite of fresh ice. A kid in the front row, maybe nine years old, pressed his face against the glass and watched a man in a white jersey with a red maple leaf skate onto the ice for warm-ups. Beside him, his grandfather just shook his head slowly, a grin he couldn't quite hide. "They let us in, then," the old man muttered, as if the NHL had personally extended an invitation. The puck dropped. The crowd roared. And for sixty minutes, a city held its breath, not because of the score, but because for the first time, the game belonged to them.

Reader's Guide

The occasion: October 13, 1972. The Winnipeg Jets, a brand-new NHL expansion franchise, played their very first regular-season game at home in the Winnipeg Arena against the Montreal Canadiens, the league's reigning Stanley Cup champions. What happened: The Jets, coached by Al Arbour, took the ice for the first time in front of a packed local crowd. The Canadiens, as expected, proved the stronger side and took the win. The exact margin was not the point of the evening. What mattered was that a Jets jersey had been worn, a Jets netminder had faced shots, and a prairie city had finally hosted an NHL game under its own name. Why it's remembered: For Winnipeg, the game was less a sporting event and more a civic milestone. Decades of being overlooked by the league ended with a puck drop. Every Jets season, every playoff run, every memorable player in the franchise's history traces its lineage back to that first, uncertain, electric night when the Arena filled and the city said, at last, "we're in."

Did You Know?

• The 1972 WHA inaugural season featured 12 charter franchises, including the Winnipeg Jets, who were not part of any NHL expansion that year—the NHL added the Atlanta Flames and New York Islanders in 1972.
• Nick Mickoski, a former NHL player, was named the Jets' first head coach, bringing experience from his playing days with the Chicago Black Hawks and Detroit Red Wings.
• The Jets' first game was played at the Winnipeg Arena, a relatively intimate venue by WHA standards, which meant the crowd noise on that first night was unusually close and deafening to the players on the ice.
• The Jets' 1972 entry was part of the WHA's broader push to bring professional hockey to markets outside the traditional NHL footprint, a gamble that ultimately reshaped the sport's geography for decades—and led to the Je