By Michael Walsh
After thirteen seasons of winning and identifiable hockey, the Hartford Wolf Pack will be no more come this holiday season.
The players aren’t going anywhere, and there will still be a team playing AHL hockey in the XL Center, but it won’t be the familiar red and blue New York Rangers-styled sweaters skating out onto the ice once Howard Baldwin’s plan to energize Hartford’s hockey fanbase comes into fruition with the rebranding of the minor league team to the Connecticut Whale.
As an avid New York Rangers fan and a Hartford Wolf Pack fan from the very beginning, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that I might pause at the idea of having to watch high-profile Rangers prospects in the almost disposed of blue and green that the Whalers made so lovingly popular in Hartford. I never was, is or will be a Whaler fan. 22 now, I was 9 when the NHL team left the city, giving me hardly enough time to truly give an earnest care about the team.
That said, I love the idea of Baldwin and his team taking over the management of Hartford’s minor league hockey team. $44 glass side seats aside, I think Baldwin can do great and possibly even exciting things for a city in desperate need of a rejuvenating act. What I don’t love is the mockery that is the Connecticut Whale, an unnecessary crutch being used by Baldwin to stir up excitement among outdated and distorted fans and the media alike.
These same fans and media have largely shunned the Hartford Wolf Pack for years and are just now getting on board for what some believe will be a hockey revival in Hartford. While everyone welcomes the added support, it’s funny that it comes with Baldwin’s simple flick of a switch. The sort of fraudulent hype and excitement is only going to be baiting more Whaler fans into watching the same minor league hockey from the same New York Rangers farm system, two things that most of the supportive Whalers fanbase have been great at avoiding over the last 13 years due to rivalry and hatred.
And that’s the real issue at hand, the fact that suddenly everyone in Connecticut is going to be turning up at the XL Center, because they’ve been led to believe that they have a chance at the NHL. It’s too little and too late, that situation is far off in a distant dream world, and Hartford has slipped far behind other viable cities, proven by the tens of thousands gathering in Quebec for a rallying cry for a team. Hartford didn’t even receive a vote in a recent player poll conducted by The Hockey News asking a handful of players what city deserves a team the most.
I guess it’s smart, renaming the team to the Whale and all, the affectionate nickname the Whalers received over the years. But it still doesn’t sit right. I know, I’ll hear it a lot, it’s just a name. But if it’s just a name, why not stay with what we have? Why do away with a logo that’s meant something to fans, players and coaches in the AHL ranks for more than a decade? Save the Whale-related fanfare as the ultimate goal instead of using it as an ill-advised gimmick that stinks of failure and the past. The Wolf Pack logo has been identified with success, as the team has made the playoffs in 12 of 13 seasons, only finishing worse than third once. If Baldwin truly is the genius everyone makes him out to be, he should be able to market that.
Despite everything I’m against, I’m still excited for the extra buzz Baldwin is somehow creating. Maybe walking to the XL Center on game nights won’t resemble a graveyard anymore. Wouldn’t that be nice? If Baldwin continues college student discounts, I’ll go to the same amount of absurd games as I did last year. The Wolf Pack roster will have to don the hopeless blue and green colors at some point this season, but as long as I’m not forced to do so, I’ll continue watching hockey in Hartford from the stands in my New York Rangers jersey.
