New England Whalers / Hartford Whalers

World Hockey Association (1972-1979)
National Hockey League (1979-1997)

Our Favorite Gear

Order at Royal Retros

Hartford Whalers
Replica Jersey

When it comes to Replica Jerseys, we turn to our friends at Royal Retros, who put extraordinary detail into their fully customizable hockey sweaters.

• Free Customization Included

• Any name and number

• Heavyweight sewn tackle twill

• 100% polyester

• Heavyweight fabric made to game standards

• Fight strap included

The Whaler replica jerseys are available in navy, royal blue, white, and green.

Background

The New England Whalers, later known as the Hartford Whalers, were one of the last two teams to join the brand-new World Hockey Association (WHA) in 1971, but they ended up being one of the most successful clubs in the  league, on the ice and at the gate.

Rebel Yell

The formation of the WHA was announced on September 13, 1971, by Gary Davidson, one of the co-founders of the American Basketball Association (ABA). His partner in both ventures was Dennis Murphy. Because they knew next to nothing about hockey, the duo recruited Bill Hunter, who had co-founded the Western Hockey League (WHL), a minor league circuit, in 1952. Hunter, for his efforts, was awarded a franchise to be based in his hometown of Edmonton, Alberta. 

A month and a half later, on November 1, 1971, the official launch occurred at a press conference in New York City. Ten cities would be home to the new league’s franchises, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dayton, St. Paul, Winnipeg, Calgary, and Edmonton. On November 21, the league welcomed franchises from Boston and Ontario (the exact city to be determined, but it wound up being Ottawa).

Please Come to Boston

The Boston team was owned by Howard Baldwin, John Colburn, Godfrey Wood, and William Barnes. The quartet considered placing the team in Providence, RI, but settled on Boston, where it would compete for fans with the very popular Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League (NHL), as well as their farm team, the Boston Braves of the American Hockey League (AHL).

In January 1972, the team hired former Boston University coach Jack Kelley and chose the name New England Whalers. In April, former Montreal Canadien Larry Pleau became the first player signed by the Whalers. American-born Pleau was finishing a stint with the Canadiens’ farm team, the Nova Scotia Voyageurs. In his return to major league hockey, he would be joined by several fellow American players, many with connections to the Boston area.

The Whalers played their first game on October 12, 1972, hosting the Philadelphia Blazers at Boston Garden before 14,442 fans. The home team overcame a 2-0 deficit to win 4-3. Tommy Williams scored the first goal in team history, with Pleau knocking in the game-winner. 

Our Favorite Gear

Order at Royal Retros

New England Whalers
Replica Jersey

When it comes to Replica Jerseys, we turn to our friends at Royal Retros, who put extraordinary detail into their fully customizable hockey sweaters.

• Free Customization Included

• Any name and number

• Heavyweight sewn tackle twill

• 100% polyester

• Heavyweight fabric made to game standards

• Fight strap included

When you make a purchase through an affiliate link like this one, Fun While It Lasted earns a commission at no additional cost to you. Thanks for your support!

The Whalers finished first in the WHA’s East Division with a record of 46-30-2 and won the league’s first AVCO World Cup (the WHA championship trophy), downing the Winnipeg Jets four games to one. Not surprisingly, the Whalers led the WHA in attendance in that first season, drawing an average of almost 7,000 fans a game. They might have done better had they not had to compete with the Bruins and Braves. The former had won the Stanley Cup the previous season while their farm team was also playing well. For the 1971-72 season, the Bruins had drawn almost 15,000 fans a game, with the Braves pulling in over 11,000, twice that of the next closest AHL team.

The Whalers winning ways took a bite out of the Braves gate, though, with attendance plummeting to 4,300 a game for the 1972-73 AHL season. However, the WHA squad couldn’t dent the Bruins’ armor and were tired of being fourth in line for dates at Boston Garden behind the NHL team, the NBA Celtics, and the Braves. 

Change of Hartford

On February 24, 1974, club president Howard Baldwin announced the team would be moving to Hartford effective before the end of the season. Since the city’s new arena, the Hartford Civic Center, wouldn’t be ready for nearly a year, the Whalers decamped to Springfield, MA, and made the Springfield Civic Center (now the MassMutual Center) their temporary home. Still, the Whalers did manage to kill the Braves. On June 10, 1974, the Bruins suspended the Braves’ operations.

On April 6, 1974, the Whalers played their first game in Springfield. Much like their first game in Boston, they came back from a two-goal deficit, only this time it was to topple the Chicago Cougars 6-4 in the first game of the playoffs.

Finally, on January 11, 1975, the Whalers played their first game at the new Hartford Civic Center before a sellout crowd of 10,507. After falling behind, they came back to defeat the San Diego Mariners 4-3 in overtime, with Garry Swain scoring the winning goal.

Let the Good Times Roll

The Whalers made the playoffs in all seven WHA seasons. They were always near the top of the league in attendance. That was the case until the WHA started coming undone. Still, they were one of the most stable teams in the league.

In November 1976, the made-for-TV movie The Deadliest Season, starring Michael Moriarty, was filmed in Harford, with the game scenes filmed in the Civic Center on the Whalers’ ice. Semi-pro players from the area were hired as extras and paid $50 a day. It’s suggested in the movie that the team Moriarty’s character, Kevin Conway, plays for is a pro team based in Seattle. The film was Meryl Streep’s television debut. 

A big boost came on May 23, 1977, when the Whalers signed the legendary Gordie Howe and his sons Mark and Marty. The trio had been playing for the rival Houston Aeros. The Howes helped propel the Whalers to the finals in their first season with the team. The Jets swept them, though, in four straight games. 

The Whalers faced a bit of adversity that season. On January 18, 1978, at around four in the morning, the roof of the Civic Center collapsed under the weight of snow and ice from recent storms. The team returned to Springfield and the 91 Club born. Named after the highway that connects the two towns, it became an unofficial club that united the fans as they patiently waited for the Civic Center to be repaired and expanded.  

Come Together

The following year, as merger talks between the NHL and WHA continued, the Whalers remained healthy. Many of their WHA sibling teams were not. Houston, confident it would not be included in a proposed merger, folded in the spring of 1977, while the Indianapolis Racers, once a top draw, only made it through part of the WHA’s 1978-79 season, the league’s final campaign.

Down to six teams, the WHA’s six remaining clubs pressed hard for a merger, but in the end, the NHL only accepted four teams. The Cincinnati Stingers and Birmingham Bulls were paid off and dispatched to the Central Hockey League. Fortunately, New England was accepted into the NHL, though Cincinnati had slightly better attendance in the WHA’s final season.

In anticipation of the paperwork being signed to bring them into the NHL, the Whalers changed their geographic designation to Hartford on May 23, 1979. More significantly, they unveiled their new, soon-to-be-iconic logo that featured a “W” topped with a whale tail. Within the negative space, a cleverly hidden “H.” Designed by Hartford native Peter Good as a freelance assignment for a local ad agency called Jack Lardis Associates, it remains one of the most memorable and recognized logos in sports history. 

A month after they announced the new name and logo, the Whalers officially joined the NHL as the WHA folded its tent for good. The Whalers opened their inaugural NHL season on the road against the Minnesota North Stars. Gordie Roberts scored the Whalers’ first NHL goal at 14:15 of the third period as the former WHA team fell 4-1.

Welcome Back

The Whalers Hartford homecoming came on February 6, 1980, after an absence of two years and 19 days. The team took the Civic Center ice against the Los Angeles Kings. The Whalers, in familiar form, came back from a two-goal deficit to win 7-3 before a sellout crowd.

On April 6, 1980, the Whalers defeated the Detroit Red Wings 5-3 to finish their first NHL season by qualifying for the playoffs for the eighth consecutive year. In the process, the Whalers set six NHL expansion team records.

While not as successful as their former WHA siblings the Edmonton Oilers, who won five Stanley Cups between 1984 and 1990, the Whalers were competitive through most of the 80s. That was thanks, in large part, to the hiring of veteran hockey executive Emile Francis as president and general manager in 1983. Among his biggest deals was the one that brought star goaltender Mike Liut and forward Jorgen Pettersson from St. Louis for veterans Greg Millen and former team captain Mark Johnson in February 1985. A few weeks later,  the Whalers went on a nine-game unbeaten streak that included a team-record seven consecutive victories.

New Ownership. Worried Fans

On September 7, 1988, the Whalers were sold to Richard Gordon and Donald G. Conrad for $31 million. While the duo insisted they were committed to Hartford, some of their actions suggested otherwise. For example, a May 1993 visit by Gordon to Minneapolis, abandoned weeks earlier by the North Stars, raised some eyebrows. Gordon said the visit was not about moving the Whalers but assessing possible sites for Whalers’ exhibition games.

Gordon and Conrad, though, wouldn’t be the Whalers undoing. On June 1, 1994, the team was sold to Peter Karmanos, Thomas Thewes, and Jim Rutherford for $47.2 million. The new owners committed to keeping the Whalers in Hartford for at least three years. Again, fans were weary.

Despite a massive season ticket drive and efforts by local and state officials, along with support from the corporate community, Karamanos and Rutherford were looking beyond Hartford. Toward the end of the 1996-97 season, after two months of negotiations, Connecticut Governor John Rowland and Karmanos announced the Whalers would be leaving Hartford after the season. The two sides remained far apart on several issues, with the main sticking point being a new arena deal. The team agreed to pay a $20.5 million penalty to leave at the end of the season, a year before its four-year commitment expired.

The Last Waltz

The Whalers concluded 18 years of NHL play in Hartford with a 2-1 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning on April 13, 1997. Kevin Dineen scored the last Whalers goal at the Civic Center, with Geoff Sanderson and Andrew Cassels assisting. Karmanos, in Art Modell fashion, was not present. The sell-out crowd, though, gave the team a raucous send-off. 

Last-ditch efforts in April 1997 to keep the team in Hartford came to nothing. The move became official on May 6, 1997, when Karmanos and Rutherford, standing next to North Carolina Governor James Hunt, announced at a press conference in Raleigh, NC that the team would be known as the Carolina Hurricanes. 

Less than a month later, the New York Rangers moved their AHL farm team, the Bingamton Rangers, to Hartford. The Whalers’ name remained the property of the Hurricanes, so on July 31, 1997, the AHL club was officially renamed the Hartford Wolf Pack following a name-the-team contest. They were expected to be called the SeaWolves in honor of the nuclear submarine designed and built in southern Connecticut, but the East Coast Hockey League‘s Mississippi SeaWolves objected.

In 2010, the team changed its name to the Connecticut Whale but reverted to Wolf Pack in 2013, their nickname today. From the start the city took to the new team, drawing over 7,000 fans a game to the Civic Center in their first season. That was good for third best in the AHL. It helped that the team was very successful on the ice. 

Today, efforts continue to bring an NHL team to Hartford either through expansion or relocation.

Hartford Whalers Shop

Editor's Pick

Order Now from Amazon

The Rebel League

The Short and Unruly Life of the World Hockey Association

By Ed Willes

 

The Rebel League celebrates the good, the bad, and the ugly of the fabled WHA. It is filled with hilarious anecdotes, behind the scenes dealing, and simply great hockey. The upstart WHA introduced to the world 27 new hockey franchises, a trail of bounced cheques, fractious lawsuits, and folded teams. It introduced the crackpots, goons, and crazies that are so well remembered as the league’s bizarre legacy.

But the hit-and-miss league was much more than a travelling circus of the weird and wonderful. It was the vanguard that drove hockey into the modern age. It ended the NHL’s monopoly, freed players from the reserve clause, ushered in the 18-year-old draft, moved the game into the Sun Belt, and put European players on the ice in numbers previously unimagined..

When you make a purchase through an affiliate link like this one, Fun While It Lasted earns a commission at no additional cost to you. Thanks for your support!

New England Whalers Video

New England Whalers upset the Soviet Red Army team at the Hartford Civic Center. December 27, 1976.

In Memoriam

Defenseman Brad McCrimmon (Whalers ’93-’96) died on September 7, 2011 in the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl air disaster in Russia.

Left wing Paul Cyr (Whalers ’90-’92) passed away from a heart attack on May 12, 2012 at age 48.

Right wing Gordie Howe (Whalers ’77-’80) passed at the age of 88 on June 10, 2016. New York Times obituary.

Links

World Hockey Association Media Guides

World Hockey Association Programs

National Hockey League Media Guides

National Hockey League Programs

###