Newsgroups: rec.sport.hockey
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 13:00:06 -0400 
From: "James J. Murawski" <jjm+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Whalers history (Was: NHL (Cleveland) Trivia Question)
	<1992Oct13.142034.20308@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
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There still seems to be some confusion on the Whalers history in Hartford:

Earlier today, I wrote:

>As I said back on August 28th, I attended several Whalers games in the
Hartford
>Civic Center in the 1970s (the only one that I actually remember who the
>opposing team was when the Whalers & Howe played the Jets & Hull one Friday
>night in February [I forget what year]).
> 
>From the confusion here on the net, it appears that I am the only rsh'er who
>actually attended WHA games in Hartford back in the '70s.  I lived 20 miles
>from the Civic Center for the first 18 years of my life, and during my early-
>to-mid teen years, the Whalers played in Hartford as the New England Whalers
>of the WHA.

In e-mail to me, Paul Platosh <pp21+@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:

>You are wrong.  The New England Whalers only played 3 seasons in
>Hartford, some of which were played in Springfield.  They started out in
>Boston, and played there for quite some time until there was aome kind
>of ownership dispute, the terms of which I've never seen disclosed. 
>That's when they moved to Hartford, and a few seasons later, entered the
>NHL.

From the r.s.h. FAQ:

>Available from David Anthony Wyatt <wyatt@ccu.umanitoba.ca>:
> Keyword    Description
> ALLLIST    Alltime List of Professional Hockey Franchises

On 14-Oct-92 in Re: ALLLIST    Alltime List of Professional Hockey Franchises
user wyatt@ccu.UManitoba.CA writes:

> 42. New England Whalers (WHA)                    1972/73   1978/79
>      Team shifted from Boston to Hartford for '73/74 season.  Joined NHL for
>      '79/80 season.
>     Hartford Whalers                             1979/80   present
>...
>Sources:
>Mike D. (mdoyle@trwind.trw.com)
>Klein, Jeff Z. and Karl-Eric Reif. _The_Klein_and_Reif_Hockey_Compendium._
>   Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited. 1986.
>Whitehead, Eric. _The_Patricks:_Hockey's_Royal_Family_. Halifax: Formac
>   Publishing Company Limited. 1980.

So, from the "Alltime List of Professional Hockey Franchises", it seems,
according to the sources quoted (probably Klein & Reif) that the New England
Whalers did indeed play all but one of their WHA seasons in Hartford, with
the exception of the ~1.5 years that they had to play most of their home games
in Springfield when the Civic Center roof collapsed.  That put the New
England Whalers in Hartford for six of the WHA's seven years.  Even when they
couldn't play in Hartford because of the reconstruction of the Civic Center,
they were always considered Hartford's team, and Springfield is just 30 miles
north of Hartford anyway.

Again, I attended several WHA Whalers games in the mid-'70s in Hartford.
The reconstruction of the Civic Center was instrumental in allowing the
Whalers to be one of the 4 WHA teams that entered the NHL in 1979.  I believe
that the 79-80 season was the first season back in the Civic Center for the
Whalers, which would have dated the roof collapse in January of 1978.

====================================================================
    Jim Murawski
    Sr. Data Base Analyst               (412) 268-2650  [office]
    Administrative Systems              (412) 268-6868  [fax]
    Carnegie Mellon University          jjm+@andrew.cmu.edu
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