About Me
The Hartford Whalers, Connecticut's all-time most beloved professional sports team. The team began play in 1972 in the newly formed WHA( World Hockey Association) as the New England Whalers, playing their home games in the Boston Garden. Under the guidance of the teams owner, Howard L. Baldwin Sr., the team decided that the Boston market was too swamped with hockey teams, with the Bruins playing to capacity crowds nightly, and the new NCAA National Champion Boston University Terriers all calling Boston home. The teams top two choices were Providence and Hartford, both of whom were building new Civic Centers. In the end the team chose Hartford bacause of its very impressive list of Fortune 500 companies in the city. The team would begin play in Hartford halfway through the 1974-1975 season. In 1979 the team would begin play in the National Hockey League along with the Winnepeg Jets, Quepec Nordiques and Edmonton Oilers, and to this day only the Edmonton Oilers remain in operation. The team would be a fixture on the Connecticut pro sports seen for 18 season, though the city would only see 3 winning seasons in that time. The teams run in Hartford would end on April 13th, 1997 when Peter Karmanos moved the team to the hockey paradise otherwise known as Raleigh, North Carolina despite the fact that the team had averaged 14,620 fans per night, a 14% increase over the previous season despite another losing season in Hartford.
