ROCKY HILL, Conn. — As Governor Ned Lamont was on his way in to the ballroom to make some remarks to the Small Business Summit, he was stopped bright and early Tuesday by a sportswriter with an on-topic question.
Well, the Whalers, after all, were a kind of small business here once.
As an aide muttered, “enough about Whalers, already,” or words to that effect, the Governor cautioned that there are a lot of hoops that would have to be cleared and he didn’t want to get people’s hopes up.
The aide is not alone in that sentiment. But with a Whalers-comeback story, like a UConn-Power Five story, the genie just doesn’t go back in the bottle. Lamont popped the cork on this, so everyone gets to make wishes.
“I love hockey, Connecticut loves hockey,” said Lamont, 69. “We all remember the Hartford Whalers like yesterday and it would be such a shot in the arm for this region and this state, it would energize the hockey competition.”
To recap, the Arizona Coyotes were foiled at the polls in their bid to get a new arena built. Immediately, Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin and Lamont jumped in enthusiastically on social media with overtures for the NHL to return to Hartford.
On Sunday, Lamont told WTNH-TV’s Dennis House that he had spoken to Commissioner Gary Bettman, still on the job 26 years after the Whalers left Hartford on his watch, if not at his urging, and that there is an an investment group, no names named, lined up to buy the franchise and bring it here.
“Look, (Bettman) has nothing against Hartford, I can guarantee you that,” Lamont told me. “Can I leave it at that?”
Lamont further asserted on TV that, while the current plan to renovate the XL Center would not bring it up to NHL standards, the state will do what it takes in the way of renovation if a team agrees to move here.
So here we are, staring again at the green genie, some wishing the Whalers would come back, some that this idea would disappear for good.
No illusions here. It’s most likely that the NHL and the Coyotes current owners will find a way to get their arena and stay in Arizona, for all the reasons the league went there in the first place. If not, the chances of Hartford being chosen over suitors like Kansas City, Salt Lake City, or, hey, Governor, maybe Houston, would be very small, for all the reasons the Whalers left in the first place. To get an NHL franchise, the city and state would probably have to do more than just make the XL Center viable, they would have to go overboard.
So I don’t expect to be searching for reasonable air fares to Edmonton or Calgary before I retire from sportswriting in Connecticut, but I’ve been at this too long to dismiss anything with a contemptuous wave of the hand. Crazy things happen, occasionally.
And this is the offshoot of that silly, crazy, wonderful thing that lingers between the Whalers and us. It’s just different. More often than not, relocating franchises, especially in hockey, are forgotten. Anybody remember the Kansas City Scouts?
The fact the Whalers logo and sweater remain among the best selling NHL merchandize is a cool, fun fact that allows the league and the Mayberry-Mount Pilot Hurricanes to make a few unexpected bucks. It also keeps the Whalers in the public’s mind and conversation, here and elsewhere. Within the last couple of years, two books have been written about the Whalers. Even though I covered the team for only about a year, I’m still frequently asked to talk about them, most recently for a local TV documentary expected this summer.
No, they were not particularly successful on the ice or at the box office, not nearly as popular as we remember them, or as the young-uns have been led to believe by us old storytellers, but if woebegone, the Whalers are not forgotten. Brass Bonanza still blares everywhere, and after a brief flashback to the music they used to pipe into supermarkets, I’m reminded of the Hartford Whalers, best known defunct franchise this side of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
So, apparently, is the Governor. When comes to sports, he dreams big. He got involved in the hiring of Jim Mora, and is always pushing UConn football. His predecessors did, too. Lowell Weicker dreamed of getting the Raiders or Rams in Hartford, and John Rowland signed off on the doomed deal to bring the Patriots.
“The NFL in Hartford? No that would’ve been a stretch,” George Steinbrenner once told me. “But it’s a shame you lost your hockey team.”
This dream seems more realistic than perhaps it is because the NHL was here for those years. But when the failed Kansas City franchise moved first to Denver and then to New Jersey in 1982, it meant five teams crammed between Newark and Boston, not a good formula for a national TV contract. The NHL wanted to go to the sun belt, places like Carolina, and make new hockey devotees. It has succeeded in some places more than others.
In the 26 years since the Whalers left, there has been some evolution. Linear TV and ticket sales are only slices of a larger pie that spells success for a franchise. The built-in recognition of the Whalers name and logo could help with multiple platforms. If young people all over the world like and wear Whalers hats and sweaters so much, maybe they’d follow the franchise digitally if it reappeared.
The NHL has found some success in identifying small hockey enclaves that are close to, but not in major markets; San Jose, for instance, instead of San Francisco or Oakland, Columbus instead of Cincinnati or Cleveland. This was once part of the appeal of Hartford and could be again, depending on how one looks at again having five teams so close together, sizzling rivalries or revenue split too many ways.
“Islanders, Bruins, Rangers, it would be just a cluster of hockey enthusiasm,” Lamont said. “We’ve got the national champions (Quinnipiac) here. This is a hockey state.”
It is, especially downstate and at the collegiate level, and no one would argue that the Governor has contacts with the wherewithal to do this, if they’re interested enough and he continues to mobilize the power of his office behind it, perhaps as a legacy piece.
As for other talking points, experts usually pooh-pooh the impact even successful franchises have on a local economy, but we do know that when a community loses a team, it is missed, as the Whalers are, and efforts mount to get one back.
And as far as getting hopes up, that’s part of the game. To be a franchise player, a city and state must be willing to run hard to kick the football, knowing full well it could be snatched away at the last moment. (See Brown, Charlie and Kraft, Robert.)
Maybe it’s just crazy enough to happen … someday. When it comes to the Whalers and Hartford, that old green genie never really goes back in the bottle.
