Hartford Whalers fans: 20 years of persistence, and counting

This past Saturday marked 20 years since the Hartford Whalers finished a formality. Three-plus weeks after their final game, and after a short-lived attempted intervention by Stephen D. Fish, owner Peter Karmanos resurfaced in Raleigh to unveil the new Carolina Hurricanes brand.

Yet the forlorn faithful in and around the Connecticut capital continue to demonstrate more determination and patience than Penelope from the Odyssey.

If you discount the 2004-05 lockout year, this season officially made the NHL’s post-Whalers era longer than the league’s 18-year run with a Connecticut branch. With the imminent razing of Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena, which opened the same year the Whalers transferred from the imploding WHA, there are now only 13 active NHL arenas to have hosted a Hartford visitor.

Yet many remain convinced that a sporting investment in a new sporting venue could happen for Hartford. That is one of numerous prerequisites to the underdog market ever restoring a major-league presence. Although, as recently as February, none other than number-crunching wizard Nate Silver noted on FiveThirtyEight that “The Hartford-New Haven media market is the largest in the U.S. without a ‘big four’ sports franchise.”

The congestion that wilted the Whalers’ sustainability is self-evident every time their successors take the ice at the XL Center. While the Boston Bruins and New York Rangers both lost a little brother in 1997, the latter gained a child club in the Hartford Wolf Pack. By serving as a base for the budding Blueshirts, Hartford has long become the Baby Bruins’ (i.e. Providence) natural rival, suggesting that Connecticut and Rhode Island are best used as a miniature New York-Boston dynamic.

Yet an unyielding craving for an NHL franchise to call their own impels Nutmeg Staters to opportunistically point to any ice chip of hope available.

Of course, in the eyes of a cynic, it is typical for a fan base with Hartford’s history to savor slim scraps of positivity. The Whalers won but a single playoff round in their NHL run. Conversely, the Wolf Pack won a Calder Cup in their third year of operation.

Yet the 20-year-old AHL franchise has never made Hartfordians forget its predecessor. There are those for whom top-level minor-league glory cannot substitute any NHL action. And don’t forget that a salary cap came along eight years after the Whalers vanished and morphed into the Hurricanes. That development would ostensibly ease the effort to afford a competitive squad.

But so far, the new Winnipeg Jets have done nothing to lend credence to that case. In their first six years, they have appeared in one playoff series, losing in a sweep to Anaheim in 2015. Moreover, on-ice success or not, the Manitoba Moose have consistently drawn better crowds than the Wolf Pack and Connecticut Whale in their time as AHL peers.

Yet the Moose also spelled the departed North Stars in the Twin Cities market for two years as an IHL team, but did not last long and did not achieve remarkable attendance. Minnesota, Colorado and the Bay Area have all had lasting second tries at the NHL without gangbusting the gates at the minor-league level in between.

All of those markets and their failed first tries were mentioned in the Zambonis’ 1999 song, “Bob Marley and the Hartford Whalers.” Of those the band invited to join Connecticut fans in their lament, only Quebec City has yet to get another crack.

Yet unlike Quebec, which lost the IHL’s Rafales after two years and the AHL’s Citadelles after three, Hartford has at least kept pro hockey around the entire time. And the University of Connecticut men’s program has elevated its prominence by joining Hockey East and shuffling from its campus ice house to the XL Center.

To date, almost literally all of the state’s existing hockey entities have failed to band together and woo back the NHL. Former Whalers owner Howard Baldwin signaled one particular letdown by abandoning the Wolf Pack’s brief change to the Connecticut Whale two years after introducing it and assembling the Whaler Hockey Fest.

Yet the broader landscape continues to make almost as many encouraging changes as it does discouraging ones. This coming autumn, the NHL will expand for the first time in 17 years, going from 30 to 31 teams with the inauguration of the Vegas Golden Knights.

Las Vegas’ pro hockey track record: Six IHL seasons via the Thunder, whose attendance count melted exponentially throughout the ’90s; then the ECHL’s Wranglers, whose support peaked in their third season and who folded after their 11th.

Yet that market is getting a look, and while the Eastern Conference is still more populated than the Western, odds are the NHL will want to reestablish an even number of teams before long. And three current Eastern franchises (Toronto, Detroit and Columbus) were once in the Western.

No matter how numerous or weighty the cautionary facts might be, the reasons why an eventual Hartford Whalers reboot could theoretically happen still linger. As long as they do, so will the hopeful holdovers from the old fan base and the new generations they are passing on a dead (err…sorry, dormant?) crest to.

Seriously, let the puck Penelopes hold out that hope. They are an example of how, even away from the playing surface, sports can actively teach admirable qualities, like appreciating a part of a good former era and never abandoning the belief that it can be rekindled.