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
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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