Hartford Whalers: How the Brass Bonanza fell silent

Recently, I got a question from a new Canes fan asking about the link to Hartford. What caused the team to move? What really went wrong in New England’s rising star to see the only sports team based in the area moved down south to a non-traditional hockey market in Carolina? Was the NHL that hellbent on expansion southward? Why do the Hartford Whalers not exist anymore?

I’m going to do my best to explain everything that happened in Hartford and why the team left in the way they did. Specifically, why they moved down south, what happened to hockey in Hartford after the organization migrated. I’m going to try to explain why the Hartford Whalers are now just a memory for the NHL and hockey fans.

There’s no easy way to start this, so, I’m going to start with the organization’s birth. Notice how I didn’t say it’s NHL birth because the Hartford Whalers had success before they were an NHL team. Back in the ancient year 1972, there was a rival league to the NHL. It was a year when the World Hockey Association operated alternatively to the historic NHL.

It’s important to remember that the Whalers did not start out in Hartford, originally being called the New England Whalers and playing at Boston Garden, the Whalers started off in the same place the Bruins did. While the Hartford Whalers would win the first-ever Avco cup in 1972, it obviously didn’t end well. Otherwise, the Hurricanes wouldn’t exist, so what went wrong?

In the WHA, the Whalers would never find the same success as they found in the World Hockey Association’s first year. In the seven years that the WHA existed, the Whalers would only win it once, and that was in the inaugural year. After that, it was a lot of trying but never reaching the same heights they did in 1972.

In 1978, the league became aware that the future of the WHA was unlikely, and in 1979, the teams played out the final season in the history of the WHA. From the carnage and burning wreckage of the WHA, 4 teams were allowed to join the NHL but were severely stripped and damaged in terms of their rosters.

The WHA teams had to face, not only the players who had NHL rights in the NHL while they were over in the WHA going back to the team with their rights, but they also had a dispersal draft. The teams in the NHL got to take one player off each roster, protect them and shuffle pieces around before the WHA teams would get a pick of the league’s spare parts.

The teams that had been competitive in the WHA struggled, while the Edmonton Oilers who were still building for the future, found success. It was evident that the other three teams would find it difficult to emulate that success in the NHL. But that didn’t stop them from trying.