Gordie Howe and his sons Mark and Marty played for the Houston Aeros back in the 70's.
Posted on 05/06/2017 8:47:31 AM PDT by Steven Scharf
Hartford Courant Let's Buy The Whalers And Bring Them Back Home Bring Back The Whalers
Hartford city councilman John Q. Gale has proposed a way for the Whalers to come back to Hartford.
By JOHN Q. GALE Friday, May 5, 2017
Forbes Magazine says that the Carolina Hurricanes (our Hartford Whalers) National Hockey League franchise is worth $230 million. As the team has the lowest attendance in the league, this is likely an overstatement, but let's work with it. Hurricanes owner Peter Karmanos Jr. said earlier this year that he would entertain offers for his team. What if all 38 towns in the Capitol Region Council of Governments banded together to buy the franchise and brought it back to Hartford?
Of course, interest in the Whalers in the Hartford area never waned and recent talk of the New York Islanders coming to Hartford reignited central Connecticut hockey pride. Reebok notes that Whalers paraphernalia is the their top seller of all non-active teams and Sports Illustrated has ranked the Whalers logo third best of all time.
Hockey pride notwithstanding, central Connecticut is facing a crisis in economic development. Our state and local economies are laggards; we are not growing existing business nor attracting new business. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy may have low approval ratings, but he gets it — regions that have invested in their cities are thriving.
In his budget address, Malloy said, "We've yet to build enough thriving, vibrant city centers — with lower tax rates — where industry and business want to grow. The truth is, other states have had the foresight to make necessary investments in these areas, and as a result they've gained a competitive advantage on us."
Yet, even as these truths become more self-evident, towns in Greater Hartford continue to be reluctant to throw their lot in with the city. Regionalism seems to be a dirty word, instead of our salvation. What if we could provide the region with an identity, a rallying point; what if there were a way to bring back the Whale and give it a built-in metro area base of support; and we did it all by regionally cooperating. Such cooperation would be key; we know that when the Whalers were here, not enough of the region was engaged and ticket sales were not robust enough to keep the team here.
Before you dismiss this as a quixotic dream, here's my plan.
Grand lists are representative of the respective wealth of each town. So, the 38 towns would each pay a portion of the purchase price of the Whalers hockey team based on their percentage of the total grand list of all 38 towns. So, for example, by my calculations, Wethersfield is 3.22 percent of the total and Tolland is 1.79 percent. Wethersfield would then pay $7.41 million toward the purchase price, while Tolland would pay $4.11 million. Looking at all the capital region towns, West Hartford, with the highest grand list, would pay $18.69 million, while Andover, with the lowest grand list, would pay $822,000. On a per capita basis, these four towns range from a low of $252 per person to a high of $296 per person. The average per capita cost for all 38 towns is $274 per person.
That's right, for a one time payment of $274 per person, we could all own the Whalers!
With Connecticut's budget plunging deeper into the red, Hartford's finances teetering and towns across the state warily watching allocations of state aid for the coming year, it might hardly seem the time to spend money buying a professional hockey team. But, even as we struggle to straighten out the fiscal situation, we must have an eye on the long-term economic growth of our region. Judicious investments can yield strong results as we regain our fiscal footing and become that place where industry and business want to grow.
In buying the Whalers, each town would have to decide how to raise its portion of the purchase price. Some might just budget for it in one year, others might bond for it, paying the cost over 20 years at an annual per capita expenditure of about $14. In any case, no particular town is overly burdened. The Capitol Region Council of Governments, or a new regional authority, could be designated to manage the team. Done right, each town would potentially stand to receive distributions from profitable team operations.
Profitable operations require support from the community. Because each town would have a stake in the outcome, one might expect each town, indeed each neighbor, to promote attendance. We would be using our entertainment dollars to invest in ourselves. Beyond any financial concerns, we would be investing in the emotional well-being of our community. We would all be in this together; we could all take pride in our Hartford Whalers. Green Bay, where the Packers NFL football team is publicly owned, would have nothing on us. And in the process, we would have advanced regionalism.
John Q. Gale, a lawyer, is a member of the Hartford City Council.
The World Hockey Association (WHA) when it merged with the NHL was only allowed 1 US franchise but 3 Canadian.
Houston had a successful WHA franchise, the Aeros, but the Hartford Whalers got the NHL franchise and they had to fold.
Houston later got a farm team for the Minnesota Wild that had the name Aeros but no where near the success and has left town.
I love the NHL and it is a niche sport. Expansion has killed the league and it needs to contract. Bring back the Patrick Division.
Yeah, but the one that's growing doesn't give a damn about going to hockey games.
Gordie Howe and his sons Mark and Marty played for the Houston Aeros back in the 70's.
The Whalers were hampered by numerous off-ice factors. Hartford was the smallest American market in the NHL and was located on the traditional dividing line between the home territories for Boston and the two New York area teams, the Rangers and Islanders. This limited the team’s marketability. Additionally, for most of the Whalers’ tenure as an NHL team, the Hartford Civic Center was one of the smallest arenas in the league. At its maximum, it seated just 15,635 for hockey. The team only averaged over 14,000 fans twice in their 15 years at the Civic Center. They averaged only 13,867 from 1980 to 1997. Most of their sellouts came when the Bruins or New York Rangers played in Hartford, which brought thousands of their fans with them.
Wikipedia
Hey, I just wanna hear the Whaler’s Fight Song!
I thought I had found a source of whale oil for my antique lamps after reading the headlines. I had no idea about hockey.
I guess that doesn’t affect Greenwich Connecticut though as I see mega million $$$$ mansions are still selling there.
Go Bolts!
Next year...
5.56mm
Did Jai Lai survive in Miami after the fixing scandal?
5.56mm
Until the Dodgers come back, nothing will ever be right.
Do illegal immigrants on welfare go to hockey games?h
I grew up in Nassau County, and I feel your pain.
I drive to LI fairly frequently, and I can’t BELIEVE how bad things are in Connecticut. When I was growing up, CT was a sleepy, Republican state with low taxes and low energy.
I recently stopped in Vernon, which was always an OK place to get some chow. OMG, it was like Brooklyn in the 1970s.
WTF happened to Connecticut? It cannot just be taxes, there are lots of nice places with ridiculous taxes.
After spending a week in my home town, my conclusion about the tri-state area is - those people didn’t have enough children. As they aged, their need for illegal immigrants to do their sh*t increased to the point that their people are a minority, soon to be obliterated.
As Steve King said, you cannot save your civilization with other people’s babies.
I don’t know the Whaler’s fight song, but how about this:
We’re calling all fans
All you Giants ball fans
Come watch your home team
Running races round those bases
Cheer for your favorites
Out at Coogan’s Bluff
Come watch those Polo Grounders
Do their stuff
Texas is a minority majority state now, it may become a victim of its own success. We’ll see in 20 years.
Carolina has been to only 2 playoffs in the time they have been in there, 1 of those years they won the Stanley Cup, rather amazing.
The demon craps killed that once beautiful state. Now it's just empty strip malls, gambling venues, fallow farmland, and ticks. Parasites feeding on parasites - there's a certain karmic justice in that.
Danburian of yesteryear, and Ranger fan. My brother and I would take I-84 to Hartford when the Rangers played the Whalers, in the late 70’s. About a 55 minute drive, Civic Center was right off the highway exit, two bucks to park, and eight bucks for a reasonably good seat. Not as rousing as seeing them in The Garden, but a lot cheaper, and more convenient !
Now I watch them in Anaheim. Still convenient (25 miles away), but hardly cheap.
The Whalers came into the NHL as part of the NHL-WHA merger agreement in 1979. They were relocated to North Carolina in the 1990s during the "NBA-ization" of the NHL. The NHL was more interested in moving into large TV markets across the country than in keeping teams in small markets with stronger hockey fan support.
That’s an interesting thought. What’s more interesting to me is that Houston doesn’t seem to come up in any conversations about NHL expansion these days. When they added Las Vegas to the league for next year, the other cities under serious consideration for expansion teams were Seattle and Quebec City.
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