by the 1925-26 season, whl teams were openly selling players to their richer nhl rivals to stay afloat. nevertheless, financial problems were too great to overcome, the nhl board of governors intervened by purchasing the contracts of every player in the whl for $258,000 and the league formally disbanded. while the remnants of five former whl teams immediately formed the professional prairie hockey league, the western teams had been stripped of their best players while the nhl and the stanley cup's trustees regarded the prhl as a new minor league and not a continuation of the major professional whl. the new league would contract to just three saskatchewan-based teams by 1927 and disappear altogether in 1928.