Remembering the Whale - 23 years later

By Mark Pukalo

I made it to my seat behind the goal at the Civic Center on April 23, 1992 for the pre-game skate, just trying to squeeze the last bit of enjoyment out of another disappointing season for the Hartford Whalers.

It was a little over a year after Hall of Famer Ron Francis was shockingly traded and the only reason the Whalers made the playoffs was that the Quebec Nordiques were more dreadful in a five-team division. Hartford won 15 games fewer than they lost in the 1991-92 regular season and were no threat to the mighty Montreal Canadiens in the first two games of the postseason.

The Civic Center looked about half full for Game 3, with only the diehard fans in the seats - even the most hopeful expecting to see two more games before moving on to the offseason.

A funny thing happened though. The Whalers came at the Canadiens in waves that night. They hit - even Andrew Cassels. They created. They used their speed. Whether Montreal had assumed the Whale would just roll over or not, the Habs could not get a handle on the game. Murray Craven scored twice while Patrick Poulin, Zarley Zalapski and John Cullen also got the puck past Patrick Roy.

I had always enjoyed hockey and especially liked going to games with my group of friends. But I wasn’t totally invested. Basketball was still my favorite sport and soccer was probably second.

When I walked out of the building that night after a 5-2 victory, I was a true hockey fan. I had never seen a more exciting sporting event. Hockey was No. 1. It has been for almost 28 years since.

I remembered days like that this week with the 20^th anniversary of the Whalers’ final game upon us. It’s hard to believe it’s been two decades since political stupidity and greed took the team away from the community and its loyal fans.

You think about the sorrow and the joy of the 20 years. Unfortunately, many of the memories are painful. One playoff series victory. Many tough days on and off the ice. But there is still something that makes you smile when you hear Brass Bonanza.

I was in the Civic Center for the college basketball game the day before the roof collapsed, but there would be many more close calls for the Whalers when they reached the NHL.

I laid on the floor listening to the radio for Game 7 of the 1986 second-round series with Montreal when Claude Lemieux went high to the glove side on Mike Liut in overtime. The Whalers were probably a better team that season and could have won it all if they had gotten past that game. How much would a Stanley Cup have changed their fortunes?

Hartford won the Adams Division the following season - the only time they finished better than fourth - and lost in the first round, but the most gut-wrenching defeat came in 1990.

The Whalers led the hated Boston Bruins two games to one and owned a 5-2 lead after two periods in a raucous Civic Center. Ray Bourque wasn't skating onto that ice. He was injured. But mistake after mistake led to goals against. Bob Beers scored. Yes, Bobby Beers. Randy Ladouceur was minus-4. Dave Poulin’s shot on the winning goal was traveling so slow it barely got over the line, but somehow it eluded Peter Sidorkiewicz. At least that’s how I remember it. Bruins 6, Whalers 5. Final.

I’ve never been more crushed walking out of a sporting event. It took every ounce of restraint to not punch one of the many disgusting Bruins fans in our face as we left the Civic Center. This night came about a month after Christian Laettner beat UConn at the buzzer in the Eastern Regional final. Crazy.

The Whalers would take that series to seven games, but lose. Same thing happened in 1992. Yvon Corriveau missed the net on a breakaway in overtime and Russ Courtnall scored from the slot to win the last playoff game in franchise history. Whether it was a joke or not, I heard second hand later on that Whalers goalie Frank Pietrangelo told reporters he thought the shot went under the ice to beat him. It was the Montreal Forum. So, who knows?

The team could never win the big game. It was frustrating. But they were the lovable losers. When people went to games, they were hooked. The city would have gone nuts over a long playoff run.

Like any smaller market professional teams, the stands were full when they were winning and attendance went down when they hit tailspins. No offense to the amazing UConn women’s basketball program, but Connecticut doesn’t love that sport. It loves winners.

For most of us, though, the Whalers became a big part of our lives. We got season tickets as a group, sometimes scalped when we didn’t pick that game in our preseason draft, got together before games, got together after, and often cried in our beer.

You remember the great wins like in 1992 and some of the crazy moments, the time freezing rain prevented me from going to a game against Minnesota on a Sunday night after I did a 360 on the highway. Somehow, I got home driving 2 mph with one wheel on the side of the road that night. I wasn’t around for some of the great moments in the mid-80s with Bill, Doug, Chip, Bob and others, when they would talk to players as they walked by at the Chuck’s Steak House bar after games. I was told the story about Ray Ferraro, who would always acknowledge the group in the glory days at Chucks. One night Bill Calhoun, my good friend who passed away suddenly in 2010 and I miss every day, was not at the game. Ferraro, I was told, walked by that night and turned back to say, “Hey, where’s Billy?”

It was that kind of a relationship with the fans. It could have continued.

I remember hearing the story of the group seeing Claude Lemieux at a bar in the late 80s and, after the hockey villain took some verbal abuse from Whalers fans, he simply showed them his 1986 Stanley Cup ring. His brother Jocelyn Lemieux later played for Hartford and became a crowd favorite for a short time. We told him the story of his brother one day and he laughed.  We urged him to help get the team to win one for us in Boston late in a lost season. They went out and won the game. Lemieux was quoted afterward that they wanted to win this one for the loyal fans.

One night the players and officials stood for the national anthem and there was a bit of a delay before the singer started. Frenchy, standing five seats or so to the left of us behind the goal wearing his green Whalers jacket and looking disheveled as ever, took the opportunity to send a message to referee Denis Morel - often noticeable for puzzling calls - who was facing us from the red line. “Hey Morel,” Frenchy wailed for everyone to hear. “What are you looking at?” There was also time that the Whaler mascot made an unintended obscene gesture while riding the Zamboni, but we won’t go too deeply into that.

Those were the days. You thought they’d go on forever. But Eddie Johnston, with the approval of coach Rick Ley apparently, traded Ronnie “Franchise” and Ulfie Samuelsson for Cullen, Zalapski and some guy named Jeff Parker. It was the beginning of the end. They missed the playoffs the final five seasons.

Owner Richard Gordon didn’t know what he was doing. They were always flailing. The Whalers drafted a superstar defenseman named Chris Pronger. But, although you could see his great talent, you remember the day when he put his coat over his head to hide who he was (like no one could figure it out) after several players were arrested in Buffalo. Pronger didn’t want to be in Hartford after a while. When Peter Karmanos bought the team, GM Jim Rutherford dealt him to St. Louis for Brendan Shanahan. Shanny said all the right things at first. But after one of the quietest 40-goal seasons (44) in NHL history, he wanted out.

I went from being a fan to one of the beat writers for the Hartford Courant in the Whalers final two seasons. I learned a lot. It took me to some great or interesting places that I will always remember - Barrie and Kitchener, Ontario, Ottawa, Los Angeles, St. Louis, the pond in Anaheim, Dallas, Toronto, Landover, Mary. and Tampa.

I should have known something was going on when I saw the look on Shanahan’s face in the locker room after the final contest of the 1995-96 season. It was the last game for the Sabres at the old barn called "the Aud" in Buffalo and the teams settled scores with brawl after brawl. There were 156 penalty minutes and eight 10-minute misconducts. Shanahan and goalie Jason Muzzatti were ejected. Shanahan was probably thinking - the Whalers are never going to get any breaks.

“I don’t get it,” Shanahan said to me that night. “Someone has to have more (power plays), but nine to two? I kind of thought the Sabres were just as willing as we were. That’s a pattern that’s developed with us and it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop.”

Hmm.

On came another embarrassment when he asked for a trade. The easy excuse was the “uncertainty” of the franchise’s future. He was dealt to Detroit for Keith Primeau, who was a true pro and one of the most genuine athletes I had met at that point. But future Hall of Famer Paul Coffey also came in the deal. That created more drama. Coffey didn’t want to be in Hartford, either. He asked for a trade.

I remember standing outside the visitor’s locker room in Tampa after Coffey’s admission and asking Kevin Dineen about the situation. Dineen simply said, “I don’t want to talk about anyone that doesn’t want to be on this team.”

This only would happen to the Whalers - Shanahan opposed Coffey (Philadelphia) in the 1997 Stanley Cup finals.

Dineen’s return for parts of the final two seasons made those last days more tolerable. He was John Wayne on skates, blowing around Hall of Famer Larry Robinson for a big goal in the 1986 playoffs and decking Mike Milbury - who I heard would need smelling salts to be awoken. But, most of all, he was blood and guts. He was a leader - the kind of player who was easy to root for and gave the media time when it was needed.

Those last few seasons didn’t seem like they would be the last. We all thought they would figure something out. Heck, they almost made the playoffs as a lame duck. State and city officials had to know this was going to be the only chance Hartford had to house a major-league franchise, right?

There is plenty of blame to go around. Karmanos was likely asking for too much. The State wanted to be stingy with the deal and didn’t value the team. Gary Bettman didn’t try hard enough to help broker a deal.

Isn’t it funny how Bettman has spent years and years trying to keep the Coyotes in Arizona and hardly lifted a finger for the Whalers? Heck, he’d probably lay down on the road to stop the Yotes from leaving. In Hartford, he virtually loaded the trucks for Karmanos.

Yes, Karmanos is a very unlikable figure and he deserves it. He didn’t deserve a spot in the Hall of Fame. But, all things considered, he was just a businessman. The Whalers were his business and he wanted to get the best deal possible. If he really planned to move the team to some great spot, why did he chose Raleigh? It was just the best of a lot of bad options.

One local sports host once said to me he was told state officials opened the vault for Karmanos, and pesky Pete did not want to stay. It depends who you believe or want to believe. I can’t imagine that was true.

The main culprits for the demise of the Whalers - after Gordon, Ley and Johnston took out their heart away - were the politicians. Governor John Rowland, who later went to jail as I proudly predicted, did not grasp the fact that the Whalers were going to be the only major franchise a city like Hartford could have.

Rowland and the others were easily played by Robert Kraft, who threatened to move the New England Patriots to Hartford if he didn’t get a better deal in Foxboro. Just move the Whalers out, clear the decks and Patriots are coming. Simple, right?

The politicians all fell for it. Kraft was never coming to Hartford. Not then. Not ever. Rowland and the state legislature could not have been more stupid and own less foresight. Democrats, Republicans, all of them. Joe Leiberman couldn’t be bothered. One of his advisers once told me, there was “no clear advantage to the state to have the Whalers in Hartford.” That’s total crap. The tax money alone would have made them viable. But Rowland’s advisers and some politicians apparently clapped when he announced the Whalers were leaving. What were they cheering for? Did they want to rub more dirt in the wounds of loyal Whalers fans?

Just thinking about the way the state mishandled the situation still infuriates me. Time doesn’t heal wounds. Just think about what it would have been like if the Hurricanes had won the Cup in Hartford instead of Raleigh. All of the state’s “petty fiefdoms” would have been just as in love with the Whalers as the epic UConn women’s basketball team.

Connecticut is a great hockey state. Just look at the NHL rosters. Jonathan Quick, Nick Bonino, Cam Atkinson, Kevin Shattenkirk, Max Pacioretty, Ron Hainsey, Adam Erne, Ben Smith are all from the Nutmeg State. I once had to pick the high school player of the year between future NHLers Bonino and Mark Arcobello. UConn has a Hockey East team now. If the Whalers ever came back, they would thrive with a new state of art arena that could also house UConn sports.

But it will almost certainly never happen. The only way is if an ultra-rich person who loves the Hartford area and the state of Connecticut wants to put together a project. Someone like Lightning owner Jeff Vinik, who knows what he is doing and embraces the situation like he did here in Tampa. Someone who could convince Bettman he is wrong about Hartford.

But Whalers fans shouldn’t give up their dreams. This week they should remember the good times. They should smile when major hockey pundits talk about how they miss the Whale.

I will remember high fives with Bill, Doug, Mary, Bob, Chip, Alison, Dave and many others after big goals. I will remember sitting in Maple Leaf Garden peering down on the fabled ice covering the team and driving through the snow to Kanata, Ontario. I will remember interviewing great people like Dineen, Adam Burt, Geoff Sanderson, Stu Grimson, Glen Wesley, Jeff O’Neill, Sean Burke, Primeau, Jason Muzzatti, Sami Kapanen, Skip Cunningham, Paul Maurice and many, many others. I will remember getting on the team charter the day the team announced it was moving from Hartford and not knowing what to do except glare at Rutherford (I later apologized). Of course, we were headed to Tampa Bay that day. That’s where my hockey soul ended up. And I remember the last game on April 13, 1997 when tears fell freely, when Dineen scored the winning goal - against the Lightning.

We still bleed green. Never forget. It’s been 20 years. But the Whalers will forever live in our hearts.