The Hartford Whalers were a professional ice hockey team based for most of its 25-year existence in Hartford, Connecticut. The club played in the World Hockey Association (WHA) from 1972 until 1979, and in the National Hockey League (NHL) from 1979 to 1997.
Originally based in Boston, they were charter members of the WHA, known as the New England Whalers for all seven seasons. After their second season, the team moved southwest to Hartford in April 1974; five years later, the Whalers joined the NHL in the 1979 NHL–WHA merger and were renamed the "Hartford Whalers" because the Boston Bruins did not want to share a geographical market with the team.
After 25 years in New England and in Hartford, the franchise relocated to North Carolina in 1997 and became the Carolina Hurricanes.
WHA history
Early seasons in Boston (1971–1974)
The Whalers franchise was created in November 1971 when the World Hockey Association (WHA) awarded a franchise to New England businessmen Howard Baldwin, W. Godfrey Wood, John Coburn, and William Edward Barnes to begin play in Boston. The team began auspiciously, signing former Detroit Red Wings player Tom Webster; hard-rock Boston Bruins' defenseman Ted Green (the team's inaugural captain); Toronto Maple Leafs' defensemen Rick Ley, Jim Dorey, and Brad Selwood; and former Pittsburgh Penguins' goaltender Al Smith.
New England signed an unusually large number of American players, including Massachusetts natives and former U.S. Olympic hockey team members Larry Pleau (a regular with the Montreal Canadiens the previous season), Kevin Ahearn, John Cunniff, and Paul Hurley. Two other ex-U.S. Olympians on the Whalers' roster (Timothy Sheehy and Tom Williams) had spent a significant part of their careers in Boston with Boston College and the Bruins, respectively.
The Whalers had the WHA's best regular-season record in the 1972–73 season. Webster led the team in scoring and through the playoffs. Behind legendary ex-Boston University head coach Jack Kelley, the team defeated the Winnipeg Jets to win the inaugural WHA championship.
The club played first season's home games at Boston Garden and Boston Arena. However, the Arena was too small and antiquated to sustain a WHA team while the Garden was owned by the rival NHL Bruins in which the Whalers found themselves fourth in priority for dates behind the Bruins, Boston Celtics, and even the American Hockey League's Boston Braves. Fed up with the situation, Baldwin decided to move elsewhere. In late February 1974, he announced the Whalers' upcoming relocation to Hartford, targeted for early April.
Relocation to Hartford (1974) Hartford was about to open a new, modern downtown arena and convention center, the Hartford Civic Center. The city had hoped to get an American Basketball Association (ABA) team as the main tenant, but when that fell through, city leaders got in touch with the Whalers. Aside from various minor league teams in New Haven, the area had been largely bereft of professional hockey until the Whalers' arrival. The Civic Center was still being finished when the 1974–75 season began, so the Whalers played the first part of the season at the Big E Coliseum in West Springfield, Massachusetts, about north.
On January 11, 1975, the team played its first game at the Hartford Civic Center in front of a sellout crowd. The franchise remained in Hartford until it relocated to North Carolina for the 1997–98 season, albeit with an interruption for three years (January 1977-February 1980) where the team elected to play at the Springfield Civic Center when heavy snow and rain caused the roof of the Hartford arena to collapse.
Though they never again won the WHA championship, the New England Whalers were a successful team, never missing the playoffs in league history, and finishing first in their division three times. They had a more stable roster than most WHA teams: Ley, Webster, Selwood, Pleau, and Tommy Earl played over 350 games each with the club. The team scored a major coup when it signed legend Gordie Howe and his sons Mark and Marty from the Houston Aeros in 1977.
The Whalers recorded losing records in their first two full seasons in Hartford, their final two WHA seasons saw more success. They went to the finals again in 1978, with a veteran team spearheaded by the Howes—50-year-old Gordie led the team in scoring—future NHL stars Gordie Roberts and Mike Rogers, All-Star defenseman Ron Plumb, and forwards John McKenzie, Dave Keon, and Mike Antonovich, and possessed the league's best defense. The next season was not as great, however, but while age finally caught up with Gordie Howe, the slack was picked up by Andre Lacroix, the WHA's all-time leading scorer, acquired from the Aeros.
Admission to the NHL
As the Whalers were one of the most stable WHA teams, the club was one of the four franchises admitted to the NHL when the rival leagues merged in 1979. Unlike the other former WHA teams, the Whalers were not stripped of most of their players. The Howes, Rogers, Ley, Keon, Smith, Roberts and Lacroix are the New England Whalers players who stayed on the team as it made the transition to the NHL and became the Hartford Whalers. (In the case of the Howes, Detroit intentionally turned down their option to re-sign longtime Red Wing Gordie, out of respect for his legacy already in place there.) Only Selwood, George Lyle and Warren Miller were reclaimed by their former NHL teams. The Whalers were the only American-based WHA team to join the NHL.
The New England Whalers renamed themselves the Hartford Whalers in May 1979, at the insistence of the Boston Bruins who objected to the team naming themselves for New England. Connecticut-based graphic designer Peter Good (1942–2023) was hired by the Jack Lardis Associates advertising agency to design a new logo for the team. Good put a whale's tail over a "W", allowing the negative space between the two shapes to create an "H". Good also helped design the team's new uniforms for the 1979–80 season in the team's new colors of green and blue.
NHL history The Whalers were never as successful in the NHL as they had been in the WHA. They recorded only three winning seasons in their 18 years in the NHL, made the Stanley Cup playoffs eight times and won only one playoff series, earning the nickname "The Forever .500s" in mocking jest of their winning percentage. Whenever they did make the playoffs, they faced the near-certainty of having to get past the Boston Bruins or Montreal Canadiens to make it to the conference finals. The team developed a heated rivalry with the Bruins because they were based only 100 miles northeast of Hartford and the fact they used to play in the same arena. Home games against the Bruins usually attracted the Whalers' largest crowds, as many Bruins fans followed their team to Hartford. The Whalers had an all-time head-to-head record of 37–69–12 against Boston.
The Whalers were hampered by numerous off-ice factors. Hartford was the smallest American market in the NHL and was located on the traditional dividing line between the home territories for Boston and New York area teams. This limited the team's marketability. Additionally, for most of the Whalers' tenure as an NHL team, the Hartford Civic Center was one of the smallest arenas in the league. At its maximum, it seated just 15,635 for hockey. The team averaged over 14,000 fans only twice in its 15 years at the Civic Center. They averaged only 13,867 from 1980 to 1997. Most of their sellouts came when either the Bruins, the New York Islanders, or the New York Rangers played in Hartford, bringing thousands of their own fans with them.
Inaugural NHL season Upon joining the NHL, the Whalers were placed in the Norris Division of the Wales Conference. Their first NHL season in 1979–80 looked somewhat promising. They were led by Mike Rogers, Blaine Stoughton, Dave Keon, Mark Howe, Rick Ley, NHL legend Gordie Howe and the all-time WHA leading scorer, Andre Lacroix, along with the franchise's first starting goaltender, Al Smith. The Whalers also acquired another NHL legend, Bobby Hull, near the NHL trade deadline in 1980. They finished the season with 73 points and a playoff berth and had the best record of the four former WHA franchises that entered the NHL in 1979–80. The Whalers remained the most recent first-year expansion franchise to make the playoffs in their inaugural season, along with the 1979–80 Edmonton Oilers until the 2017–18 Vegas Golden Knights accomplished the feat. In the first round of the playoffs, the Whalers were swept by the Montreal Canadiens three games to none. Following this season, Gordie Howe, Bobby Hull and Andre Lacroix all announced their retirements from professional hockey.
The early 1980s Following the 1979–80 season, the Whalers had many aging veterans left over from their WHA days. To make matters worse, the Whalers reputation of making disastrous trades began to unfold, as the team began to trade away stars for mediocre players in an attempt to gain depth, with one notable example being when they traded star defenseman Mark Howe and their first NHL scoring leader, Mike Rogers, in separate deals for players and draft picks which never panned out, and also swapped defensive-defenseman Gordie Roberts, who would go on to play 15 remaining professional seasons, for the remaining half of the season of Mike Fidler's NHL career. For the 1981–82 season, the NHL realigned its divisions and the Whalers were resituated in the Adams Division of the Wales Conference. The Whalers bottomed out in the 1982–83 season with a record of 19–54–7 (45 points), ranked 20th out of 21 teams in the NHL standings. On May 2, 1983, the Whalers hired Emile Francis as their new general manager to rebuild the team. About two months later, on July 7, Francis hired Jack Evans to be the Whalers' new head coach. By the end of the 1986–87 season, Francis had cut or traded away every player from the 1982–83 Whalers' roster save for Ron Francis, Paul MacDermid, and Paul Lawless.
Success in the mid-1980s The team had a brief period of success in the 1985–86 and 1986–87 seasons. The Whalers began 1985–86 looking like a playoff contender. By the end of January, they had a record of 26–20–1 for 53 points after 47 games. At this time, however, the Whalers began to struggle when they lost their franchise player Ron Francis and star goal scorer Kevin Dineen to injuries. As a result, the Whalers struggled through February, winning just two games in the month and in danger of missing the playoffs for the sixth year in a row. In March, Francis and Dineen returned from their injuries and the Whalers put up a record of 12–4–2 in the months of March and April. The Whalers finished fourth in the Adams Division in the 1985–86 regular season, earning themselves a playoff berth for the first time since 1980. The Whalers went on to eliminate the first-place Quebec Nordiques in a three-game sweep in the first round, winning their first, and only, NHL playoff series in Hartford. The Whalers then pushed the division finals to seven games, losing the final game 2–1 in overtime to the eventual Stanley Cup champions, the Montreal Canadiens.