Editor's note: With the Houston Aeros set to play in the West Division Finals in the Calder Cup playoffs after sweeping the Peoria Riverman in the first round, CultureMap is examining the state of hockey in Houston in a multi-part series. This time: Mr. Hockey's Houston influence.

The original Houston Aeros joined the fledgling World Hockey Association (WHA) in 1971 as the Dayton Arrows. Citing area problems and an apathetic fan base (Dayton, Ohio was, apparently, a happening place in the early 1970s), the franchise relocated to Houston before the beginning of the league’s inaugural season in 1972.

As one of 12 teams in the new league, the Aeros were an immediate force, winning their first Avco World Trophy (named for Avco Corporation, a defense contractor that purchased the naming rights) in 1974 with a four-game sweep over the Chicago Cougars in the finals. They hoisted their second Avco Cup the following season sweeping the Quebec Nordiques. They ultimately came up short in a bid for a threepeat in 1976 as they found themselves on the wrong end of a sweep by the Winnipeg Jets.

The league folded two years later in 1978.

Despite owner Kenneth Schnitzer’s best effort to join the Jets, Nordiques, New England Whalers (later renamed the Hartford Whalers) and the Edmonton Oilers (who boasted a then-17-year-old phenom named Wayne Gretzky) which all merged into the NHL in 1979, the club sadly folded with the league. The NHL insisted that all three Canadian WHA teams be absorbed, and rebuffed Schnitzer’s attempted to relocate an existing franchise to the Bayou City.

It would not be until 1993 that Texas landed an NHL franchise when the Minnesota North Stars relocated to Dallas.

But hockey’s mark had been made. The Aeros were recognized as one of the most successful franchises in the WHA’s short but glorious history. They won their division four times (1974, 1975, 1976, 1977) while posting the best record in the league in each of those years. By no coincidence, the Aeros dominance coincided with the arrival of hockey icon Gordie Howe, who the team lured out of retirement at the age of 46 with an astounding four-year, $1 million contract.

For the sake of comparison, the average NHL salary at the time was $25,000 per season. The modern-day NFL equivalent of securing Howe in the mid-1970s would be the Texans luring Dan Marino out of retirement at a cap busting $25 million per and immediately winning two consecutive Super Bowls.

Howe’s motives extended beyond the exorbitant payday. The Aeros also inked contracts with each of his sons, Mark and Marty. Howe gushed in a TV interview after the signing, “I don’t know how to explain the kindness that they showed the entire Howe family when we got down. There’s no doubt in my mind that my ambitions were to play with the two boys which would never have come about if it hadn’t been for the Aeros and I’m looking forward to it.

"And with the kindness I’ve been shown in Houston, by not only hockey personnel, but the people outside of it and the news media, I’m going to have fun besides having the opportunity to play a lot of hockey with the Houston Aeros.”

Management’s investment paid immediate dividends as the three Howes would lead Houston to their back-to-back championships with Gordie winning the league MVP in 1974. The trophy was renamed the “Gordie Howe Trophy” in 1975 while he was still actively in the league.

Like the Seattle Mariners' tandem of Junior and Senior Griffey in 1990, the Howe story is one for the ages. As recently as late 2009, rumblings persisted that David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal, Boston Legal) was working on a film about Howe and his stint playing for the Aeros with his two sons. It’d certainly be better for Houston cinema than that rumored remake of The Swarm.

ALTERNATE LEAGUES, COLA WARS & JAMES CAMERON

While Howe’s involvement certainly helped the WHA, the upstart league proved no match for the entrenched NHL. The annals of sports history is littered “alternative leagues” (not Hot Topic emo alternative, but alternative in the literal sense in that it’s the same product branded differently) like the WHA or ABA.

What exactly did these entities think their more popular, financially lucrative counterparts were getting wrong?

Granted, the XFL had a couple of good ideas. Extra points had to be earned (no kicking allowed) and the camera flying over the field on wires was inspired (and quickly copycatted by the NFL). But clearly that league’s primary selling point was WWE honcho Vince McMahon’s firm belief that the NFL wasn’t nearly slutty enough, which is true, but still not a good enough reason to sink millions of dollars into an alternative league that began its season right after the Super Bowl, when football fatigue is at its zenith.

Part of me still likes to think the XFL might have hung around for a couple of more years if they’d played during the summer and ended just before the NFL’s opening night. He Hate Me still makes for a cooler replica jersey than Ochocinco.

Outside of sports, the same product/different label paradigm works quite well in some cases: Coke’s inferior-but-close-enough doppelganger Pepsi, for example, or off-brand NyQuil (which will mess you up just as good). Then there’s the well-worn Avatar paradigm.

Avatar is an absolutely terrible, schlocky movie by any reasonable standard that somehow managed to generate almost $3,000,000,000 at the worldwide box office in spite of its hackneyed, mind-blowingly unoriginal premise that we’ve already seen many, many times before. It was Oscar-worthy the first time around (when it was called Dances with Wolves), endearingly kitschy the second (Ferngully: The Last Rainforest), and a vaguely racist train wreck the third time (Disney’s Pocahontas).

Avatar is the ABA of the group: Flashier, but far less satisfying.

This never really happens successfully in sports, though. The American pro sports entertainment market is not only saturated, but each of the major leagues has what amounts to anti-trust exemption status. This doesn’t apply to minor league sports, of course, because they’re designed to feed the beast and are a natural extension of their major league counterparts.

In fact, minor league ice hockey in particular — because even top draft picks often land there — is often a more physical, and therefore more entertaining, version of its big sibling. See? I was going somewhere with this.

That was an extremely long-winded way of saying that it’s OK to make an emotional investment in minor league sports, because unlike their alternative league counterparts, they’re probably not going to fold.

“The history of the Aeros in Houston has been a three-stage run,” says former Aeros president Tom Garrity, who now serves as a consultant for the team. “You had the Gordie Howe years. My goodness. Gordie and his sons played here! That’s amazing. To get him to come in here and play; to have an icon playing for a franchise in Houston

"Then when Chuck Watson took over at they were averaging 12 to 13,000 per night and they were winning. Chuck was a great owner. Then, we came in — in 2003. We had the brand strength behind the Minnesota Wild and the brand new building, (Toyota Center), which has been great. You have three levels of perfect synergies. That’s why it’s been going on for as long as it has.”

The IHL/AHL Aeros have been a mainstay in Houston since 1994, and aren’t likely to suffer the fate of Howe’s WHA squad. Even if the city never draws an NHL franchise, the history of hockey in Houston should continue.

Next: We take a look at why more Houstonians should love a sport played on ice.

Read the first part of the series: Want to break out of Houston's Loserville? Jump on the Aeros' winning playoff train