When the Bruins weren’t the only NHL team in New England
Twenty years ago Thursday, the Hartford Whalers played their final game.
For a generation of hockey fans, the Boston Bruins have been puck-happy New England’s sole NHL team. It wasn’t always this way.
Twenty years ago Thursday, the Hartford Whalers — a fondly remembered yet underachieving team with a timeless logo and fetching theme song — played their final home game.
Peculiarly, the Whalers didn’t even know at the time where they would play the following year. But they knew it wouldn’t be Hartford.
After joining the league in 1979, the Whalers, which only recorded three seasons above .500, flatlined financially through the early 1990s and was sold in 1994. Their new owner, Peter Karmanos, pledged to move the team in 1996 if they didn’t reach lofty season-ticket sales goals, citing losses of more than $30 million on the team.
But despite an impressive “Save the Whale” campaign to buy up tickets — and after the team rejected a state offer to construct a $147.5 million arena downtown, according to The Boston Globe — it all became official March 26: The Whalers were leaving.
“It’s the meaningless game with tremendous meaning,” SportsChannel play-by-play announcer John Forslund told audiences before the April 13, 1997 game.
As the Whalers took to the ice for one last time, a sea of fans draped in blue and green waved supportive, reminiscent signs inside Hartford Civic Center. Coming to the end of another playoffs-less season, the team did at least give the Whalers faithful something to cheer for.
Sean Burke racked up 38 saves as Hartford spent the final 17 minutes of the game holding on to a 2-1 lead against the Tampa Bay Lightning. The team’s final goal was scored by longtime fan favorite Kevin Dineen.
“Fitting,” color commentator and former Whalers player Bill Gardner described it, as sustained applause rained down from the rafters following the final horn.
Hartford Whalers salute the fans at the end of their final game.
After a final postgame lap around the ice and an emotional early exit to the locker room, Dineen reemerged and grabbed the arena mic.
“It’s been my pleasure to be associated with you, the fans,” said the captain, directly addressing the fans, thousands of whom remained, at times chanting, more than a half hour after the game ended.
“The enthusiasm that you’ve shown in this building, there’s none other,” he said. “On the behalf of the players that have left Hartford and the guys who are sitting on this bench, we just want to say thank you.”
It wasn’t until May that it was announced the team would resettle in Raleigh as the Carolina Hurricanes.
Earlier this year, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver asked if it was time to bring the Whalers back; he doubtlessly isn’t the only one with that question.
Looking at the size of the Hartford-New Haven media market (the largest in the country without a “big four” sports team) and the estimated number of hockey fans in the region, Silver pondered if it would possibly benefit a team like the New York Islanders to relocate to Connecticut and bring back the Whale.
“In a 2013 study, I estimated that about 175,000 avid NHL fans live in the Hartford-New Haven metro area. That sounds bad, though it’s comparable to or slightly better than some of the lower-tier American NHL markets, including Columbus, Raleigh-Durham, Miami and Nashville (and better than Las Vegas, where the NHL is expanding).”
In addition, Silver said there could be potential for a resurgent Whalers to pull fans from the New York and Boston markets.
And seriously, anything to bring back that theme song.
