This was a killer win for the former Whalers

May 04, 2009|Dan Shaughnessy, Globe Columnist

It was a good night for Hartford. A good night for the Hartford Whalers Booster Club. Not such a good night for the Boston Bruins.

The former Whalers, now the Carolina Hurricanes, beat the Bruins, 3-0, at the Garden last night to even their second-round playoff series, 1-1. This made a small band of brothers and sisters happy back in America's File Cabinet, once the home of today's Hurricanes.

Should we really be surprised that there are still folks in Connecticut who root for the erstwhile Whalers? If we may paraphrase Tip O'Neill, all sports fanaticism is local. There are, after all, still Greater Bostonians who devoutly follow the Atlanta Braves, even though the Braves last played in Boston in 1952. These fans from yesteryear are sometimes compared to the Japanese who waged war in the Philippines long after their nation had surrendered to the Allied forces.

It's easy to understand why folks in Hartford feel they have a stake in this series. Big league is big league and the Whalers gave Hartford its only taste of the bigs when they skated at the Hartford Civic Center.

The late 1990s were not kind to Hartford. Whistling "Brass Bonanza," the Whalers packed their hockey bags and moved to North Carolina. Then Bob Kraft cut a phony deal to bring the Patriots to Hartford, where they would play in a taxpayer-financed stadium on a radioactive site that came to be known as Yo Adriaen's Landing. It was all a ruse, of course. The Patriots never left Foxborough and Connecticut governor John Rowland, who cut the deal with Kraft, wound up in federal prison (on charges having nothing to do with the Patriots debacle).

While longing for an NFL team that never arrived, and an NHL team that never came back, Hartford secured a franchise in the American Hockey League: the WolfPack, an affiliate of the New York Rangers.

Guess who led the 'Pack in scoring in that maiden season of 1997-98? A 20-year-old center named Marc Savard, that's who.

Savard was the Rangers' fourth-round pick in 1995 and began his professional career by scoring 21 goals with 53 assists for Hartford. He played nine more games with the WolfPack the following season.

He's gone on to become a Bruin top gun and an NHL All-Star, but like the Hurricanes, Savard's got Hartford hockey in his blood.

Savard scored two goals against the Whalers/Hurricanes in Boston's 4-1 Game 1 victory, but like the rest of the Bruins, he was skating in slush in Game 2. The Hurricanes pledged to rebound from their sluggish performance in the opener and they made good on the promise, much to the delight of the HWBC.