Excerpt from "The Whalers" by Pat Pickens

RALEIGH, NC. -This Saturday night the Carolina Hurricanes host the New Jersey Devils for the team's annual Whalers Night.
As we look forward to celebrating the franchise's history, below is an excerpt from the book titled "The Whalers: The Rise, Fall, and Enduring Mystique of New England's (Second) Greatest Sports Franchise" by Pat Pickens.
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The Whalers logo, color scheme, and kitsch of their history-who really has ever heard of professional sports in Hartford?-have raised their profile and mythology. Even though the Whalers are uniquely Hartford's team, the Carolina Hurricanes recently started co-opting that history.
There is a shared history between the markets, even though it went largely ignored for the Hurricanes' first two decades in Carolina. Kevin Dineen scored the Hurricanes' first goal after also scoring the final goal in Hartford, and Ron Francis was captain for both teams and was the general manager in Carolina.
Fans bought in too, and you can spot at least a few fans with Hartford jerseys at almost any Carolina home game-including at least one fan who wore a green Whalers jersey on the ice after the Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup in 2006.
The team began leaning into the Whalers' popularity after owner Tom Dundon purchased the majority stake from Peter Karmanos for $420 million in 2018. He first sold shirts in their team store, then offered a remix of "Brass Bonanza" as an option for Carolina's goal song before the 2018-19 season.
"I think there was some hesitation to acknowledge or embrace the Whalers history] in some ways," said Mike Forman, the Hurricanes vice president of marketing and brand strategy. "Before [Dundon] even had purchased the team we'd had conversations about the Whalers because he knew and we did too what type of brand the Whalers still have, even though it'd been 20 or 21 years since they relocated.
"It was something that we hadn't tapped into, from a brand perspective it was this giant waiting in the corner for us to tap into the history at some point and commemorate and celebrate that part of our history with that brand, which is still powerful. When Tom came on board he said 'we'd be foolish not to do that.'"
Dundon, Forman, and his staff took the idea to wear Whalers jerseys on-ice to Adidas, the league's jersey manufacturers, and the NHL, which loved the opportunity to prey on the insane popularity surrounding Hartford's brand renaissance.
"The league loved it," Forman said. "At the time, our club had been somewhat irrelevant for a while. This kind of broke through the noise that the Hurricanes were part of the national conversation for the first time in many years."
The Hurricanes then reintroduced Whalers green jerseys and "Brass Bonanza" when they honored their heritage with Whalers Night against the Boston Bruins on December 23, 2018. "The Hurricanes hadn't been in the playoffs in a long while, and we were treating this game as our Super Bowl," said Dan LaTorraca, the Hurricanes' senior director of marketing. "This was something that was fully in our control, that we knew would be happening that we wanted to capitalize on the right way."
Play-by-play commentator John Forslund, who called Whalers and Hurricanes games from 1994 to 2020, was among the many who had anxieties about bringing the green uniforms out.
"I saw it at the beginning as a marketing thing, and I wasn't too keen on it to be honest," Forslund said in 2019. "We were kind of apprehensive about this, but then when it happened it was a total celebration."
Carolina's presentation assuaged a lot of fears, mostly because of how the Hurricanes tipped their hats at Hartford's history. They consulted with then-general manager Ron Francis about which jerseys they should sport - the version they wore from 1985 to 1989 which had Pucky the Whale on the shoulder. They invited back Mike Rogers, one of the team's heroes in the early NHL, to drop the puck, and "Brass Bonanza" blared from the speakers for each of Hartford . . . er Carolina's five goals that night.
"It was a thrill to walk into that dressing room," Rogers said in 2019. "It just brought back a rush of memories. I was treated fantastic, and it's nice to see the new ownership group recognizing what the Whalers were."
Forslund sported a retro sweater on-air-a replica of the one he received as a present from Burke during his lone Christmas with the Whalers in 1992. Fox Sports Carolinas dedicated much of its broadcast to team history, with ex-Whalers turned hockey luminaries sharing stories from Hartford. Forslund even interviewed Skip Cunningham, the team equipment manager for every game from 1972 to 2020.
The Whalers uniform returned to New England 101/2 weeks later, March 5. Many Whalers fans, clad in their own Hartford merch, made the trek to Boston to watch the Hurricanes don the green jerseys for their game against the Bruins at TD Garden.
The Booster Club held a watch party in Hartford as the Hurricanes TV broadcast again reminisced about the 25-year history of the New England/Hartford Whalers. For Forslund, the outcome, a 4-3 Bruins overtime win, even seemed Whalers-like.
"I remember after that Boston game in Boston saying it depicts the Hartford existence," Forslund said. "Just good enough to compete, not good enough to beat them; tough place to go with those colors on; tough for the fans to walk into that building. Many did."
Whalers Night once again was a theme during 2019-20, with Carolina hosting the Los Angeles Kings this time on January 11. Hartford's longtime mascot Pucky the Whale was the master of ceremonies, and the Hurricanes made a Whalers-themed "Storm Surge" celebration-with images of whales leaping through water projected on the ice as "Brass Bonanza" blared from the PNC Arena speakers.
The Hurricanes further leaned into their history in 2020 when they unveiled their Reverse Retro jersey, a gray Whalers jersey that was an homage to the uniform Hartford sported from 1992 until their move to Carolina in 1997. They sold hats, jerseys, sweatshirts, and T-shirts with the logo, then sported the jersey on ice during the 2020-21 season, debuting it during Carolina's game against the Chicago Blackhawks on Feb. 19, 2021.
"This was very much a league campaign," Forman said. "We looked at two or three different ways to take this, and all three had a Whalers tie-in. . . . The light gray does connect our two brands-it's the one shared color we have-it's a distant connection but it is a connection.
"Sometimes you have to go by feel, and it felt right to us to not explicitly blend the two brands together in a way that would upset everyone."
The Hurricanes capitalized off the Whalers Nights with jerseys, hats, and T-shirts sold and a boost to their national profile. But they didn't leave Connecticut out in the cold. The Hurricanes auctioned the game worn jerseys and donated proceeds from Whalers Nights to Learn to Play initiative at Champions Skating Center, a rink in Hartford owned by former Whalers forward Bob Crawford.
"We wanted to make sure we were doing it the right way," LaTorraca said. "A lot of planning went into content production, the different themes but also a lot of the community outreach in terms of creating fundraisers to donate money back to Hartford youth hockey. There was a lot that went into it."
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If you enjoyed the above, you can purchase a copy of the book both
[online here
or at the team's in-arena merchandise stores.
To purchase tickets for this Saturday's game,
click here
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