With the recent news about possible NHL expansion, four cities, Quebec, Toronto, Seattle, and Las Vegas, were quick to throw their hats into the ring with others expected to follow. But there is one glaring omission from a possible NHL expansion list: Hartford.
Oh Hartford Whalers and your fans, where are you?
Hartford joined the NHL in the WHA-NHL merger of 1980 along with fellow survivors the Quebec Nordiques, Edmonton Oilers and Winnipeg Jets.
But whereas Edmonton acted like a big-league city even before joining the NHL by building a modern, big-league arena, Hartford, like Winnipeg and Quebec, acted like a small town citiy that got lucky and merely expanded their old, inadequate arenas from a WHA acceptable 10,000 to a barely NHL acceptable 15,000.
Like Winnipeg and Quebec, Hartford was content to just get by.
It was not that Hartford was completely unsuccessful. In many seasons of their existence, they iced competitive teams and established themselves as rivals for Boston, Montreal, Buffalo, the New York area teams, and their traditional WHA rival, Quebec.
When bad economic times struck, the three former WHA teams sunk and Hartford lost its team to Carolina in 1997.
Since then there has been calls to get all three cities back in the NHL. In 2010, Commissioner Gary Bettman made a tour of all three cities and stated the price of readmission: adequate fan-base, acceptable ownership, and an NHL acceptable modern arena.
But whereas action was taken in Winnipeg and Quebec, nothing has been done in Hartford.
In Winnipeg, a pressure group called the Manitoba Mythbusters was formed that snatched at any crumbs that might portend of a returned Jets. The city built a 15,000 seat arena intended for their AHL club and sought out potential investors for an NHL team, including a member of the richest family in Canada, the Thomson family.
It paid off. When the NHL could not find investors to keep a team in Atlanta, Bettman, – more than happy with the Jets potential ownership – surprisingly proclaimed an arena intended for the AHL to be adequate for the NHL. The Jets were back in business to the joy of almost all of Manitoba.
After receiving Bettman’s terms, Quebec also has taken proper action. 80,000 fans signed a petition in favor of a returned Nordiques. Politicians and investors took notice. A municipal government favoring the use of taxpayer money to build an NHL arena was elected. Then the provincial government came on board.
Meanwhile, media giant Quebecor, trying to enhance its profile in the province, switched to rectifying the Nordiques situation after an unsuccessful attempt to buy the Montreal Canadiens. They will almost certainly front a group to get an NHL franchise when expansion plans are officially announced. Quebec is almost an assured choice in any new NHL expansion.
Quebec’s response to Bettman’s terms should be a blueprint for what Hartford has to do to get the Whalers back.
The NHL is not opposed to a returned Hartford franchise. Bettman would not have made his tour in 2010 if the terms were not genuine. Good investors and markets are hard to come by and since he has already kept his word to Winnipeg, which has the smallest arena and market, there is no reason to think he will not keep his promise to Quebec and Hartford.
Contrary to those who think that Hartford would not have much chance against the competition of other NHL expansion candidates, Hartford would rank high on the list of any Eastern NHL expansion. A strong Hartford bid would rank third, only behind Quebec and Baltimore, for an Eastern NHL expansion franchise.
Southern Ontario, the best choice, is plagued with problems of compensating the Maple Leafs and the Sabres.
Cities like Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis (all failed NHL-WHA cities) are located in hockey’s “death valley” area of Ohio-Indiana that mysteriously has an aversion to professional hockey. Even the future of the Columbus Blue Jackets is not assured.
The other cities in the East are dubious southern cities like Atlanta that have no hockey roots. So a second New England franchise in either Hartford or Providence would get serious consideration, but nothing has been done to make the Whalers anything more than a nostalgic dream for Hartford.
Aside from the peripheral activities of Whalers Sports and Entertainment (Hartford Hockey LLC) founder Howard Baldwin, and the mayor’s announcement that he would like to see a returned Whalers in a new arena as part of a downtown reclamation project, nothing fundamental has been done.
So-called Whalers fans have not made themselves known to politicians and investors like their counterparts in Quebec. There are no shovels in the ground and no investors talking about a new arena or a returned franchise to Connecticut like in La Belle Province.
Hartford should have been Quebec’s Eastern partner in this coming NHL expansion. The NHL could have kept Bettman’s promise and settled the problem of the lost NHL franchises in one expansion.
For now Hartford will wait, but the door to the NHL may not be kept open forever. Once the NHL expands, they will realign to an NFL-like structure of two conferences of four divisions. The next symmetrical number after 32 teams is 40.
That will mean that the NHL will keep expanding until each division has five teams. More specifically for Hartford, there will be 20 teams in each conference.
There are 16 teams in the Eastern Conference now, leaving an opening for four Eastern expansion teams. Hartford must be one of those four.
Quebec has got one of these new franchises virtually locked up, and Southern Ontario is not going to be denied forever. In fact Southern Ontario may be so lucrative, it may be able to accommodate two more NHL teams.
If Baltimore got serious about an NHL team, they would be New England’s most serious Eastern American rival.
If the NHL decided to switch Nashville to the East, that would cause a problem. And if any “death valley” city decided they wanted to be Columbus’s rival or if any Southeastern city, including Atlanta, decided they wanted to try hockey in their market, they would get consideration. In other words, Hartford/Providence does not have a blank check about a return to the NHL.
Hartford’s old Whalers fans have to start believing that a returned team is possible, just like their counterparts in Winnipeg and Quebec have, and then take some kind of tangible action. Until then, the Hartford Whalers can only be regarded as a piece of NHL nostalgia.
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