Nominal vs present value
Local display: $7.5m · Rebased to 2024 USD via US CPI-U
How the total breaks down
WHA signing bonus. Part of a 10-year, roughly $2.75m package the Winnipeg Jets used to lure the NHL's biggest star to the new league.
First-year Jets salary. Annual salary on top of the bonus, itself among the highest in hockey at the time.
Impact 88
- Made the WHA an instantly credible rival to the NHL
- Forced NHL owners to compete financially for their own stars for the first time
- Set a signing-bonus benchmark that outpaced most teams' entire payrolls
Hull's million-dollar jump gave the WHA the star power to sign a wave of other NHL veterans and forced the older league into a genuine bidding war for talent for the first time in its history. The salary inflation that followed across both leagues through the 1970s traces directly back to a single signing bonus that made headlines well outside the sports pages.
Hull was the NHL's biggest star and its best-paid player when the upstart World Hockey Association lured him to the Winnipeg Jets in 1972 with a reported $1 million signing bonus — a sum that dwarfed what most NHL teams paid their entire roster combined. The move validated the new league overnight and forced NHL owners, who had quietly kept salaries low for decades, into open competition for their own players for the first time.