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Return of the Whale Imminent


Mac the Knife

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I just figured I'd throw this out there, but way back when NHL 06 came out, EA put an edited port of NHL 94 on the PS2 version. They had to change a few things, mostly every real player's name to something fake, but also the Hartford Whalers name & logo, since that was before the NHL got the rights to the identity back:
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My point being, if the Hurricanes just cosplaying as the Whalers is too much for some people (as a Whalers fan myself I don't have a problem with it, just FWIW) then maybe they could do something similar - make up a new Hurricanes logo using the old navy & green and stick it on one of the old Whalers uniform templates.

Hell, I'd even be okay with them just changing their regular colours to navy & green - it's a hell of a lot more interesting IMO than just being another red & black team like 1/5 of the rest of the league is, and if they emphasise the green they'd still stand out from the other team that uses those colours.

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I know conceptjacking is frowned upon but I've done worse in the last 24 hours:

 

adapting the Hurricanes' road template into a Whalers uniform looks pretty tidy to me. Something about all the navy blue and white and the shoulder yoke that goes down the back into a contrasting nameplate feels kinda high school/college hockey to me, which seems like a good fit for Connecticut, which I feel is a state made entirely of boarding schools in many people's imaginations. 

 

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♫ oh yeah, board goes on, long after the thrill of postin' is gone ♫

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If they are going to do it, then I say wear them against their former Adams division rivals, Boston Bruins and the Montreal Canadiens, and maybe only against them.  And you can buy Whalers stuff right now on NHLshop and Ice Jerseys, including jerseys.

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23 hours ago, Mac the Knife said:

To be clear, Dundon is not talking about a retconning/rebranding.  Just paying the occasional homage to the team's Hartford history.


It's so refreshing to have an owner talk like this.  We can only hope that this will cause some people to grasp the basic fact that a team remains one continuous entity despite any relocation or change of name.

 

 

23 hours ago, M4One said:

If they are going to do it, then I say wear them against their former Adams division rivals, Boston Bruins and the Montreal Canadiens, and maybe only against them. 

 

Right.  And, in a similar vein, I'd like to see the Washington Nationals break out the Expos throwbacks, and wear them (as long as we're stuck with interleague play) against the Blue Jays in Toronto.  Or at least do it at the end of spring training. The Jays play annual pre-season exhibitions in Montreal; it would make sense to bring in the Expos-clad Nationals for this

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38 minutes ago, Dan O'Mac said:

I think this is a way for them to cause an issue if the potential Seattle team wanted to be named the Whales (which I believe is a name they're considering).

 

Nah.  NHL licensing revenues (save those locally generated within each team's home territories) are equally split among the 31 teams.  They'll make coin whether Seattle winds up with a new team called the Whales, the Arizona Coyotes rebranded as the Seattle Metropolitans, or whatever.

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1 hour ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

Right.  And, in a similar vein, I'd like to see the Washington Nationals break out the Expos throwbacks, and wear them (as long as we're stuck with interleague play) against the Blue Jays in Toronto.  Or at least do it at the end of spring training. The Jays play annual pre-season exhibitions in Montreal; it would make sense to bring in the Expos-clad Nationals for this

 

Toronto would be OK, but Montréal would be rubbing salt in the wound. While I know that there are examples of teams returning to their old locations with good receptions (i.e., SF Giants at the Polo Grounds in 1962), this was because the market had a replacement team (i.e., the Mets). There’s no replacement team in Montréal, therefore it’s rubbing salt in the wound of a particularly nasty relocation.

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38 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

 

Toronto would be OK, but Montréal would be rubbing salt in the wound. While I know that there are examples of teams returning to their old locations with good receptions (i.e., SF Giants at the Polo Grounds in 1962), this was because the market had a replacement team (i.e., the Mets). There’s no replacement team in Montréal, therefore it’s rubbing salt in the wound of a particularly nasty relocation.

There's no replacement team for the same reason the original team left: no one cared enough to come to games.

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It's safe to say that the Whalers->Hurricanes move was an extremely unpopular one.  Has a team that's been born as the result of such an unpopular move ever worn throwbacks of their former selves?  Like the Sixers wore Syracuse Nationals uniforms a few times, but I doubt that was a universally unpopular move so nobody cared.

 

I kinda think it's like trolling hockey fans old enough to remember the whale.  

"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

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If they do wear the Whale uniforms, they MUST do so against Vancouver, because the Whale?  They beat Vancouver once... maybe twice in a lifetime.

"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

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Plus a lot of the Hurricanes faithful hate the Whalers because of Hartford fans and outsiders both wanting the Whale and Brass Bonanza back every time the Canes can't put five figures in the seats, which these days again is near nightly. Seems like a move for marketing to everyone but your fans.

♫ oh yeah, board goes on, long after the thrill of postin' is gone ♫

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Just wear the throwbacks and play 42 "neutral site" games in Hartford.  See what happens.

"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

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And ironically Those purchases support the hurricanes. 

"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

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8 hours ago, Scratcher said:

So Whalers is wrong for a team name, but Deer Hunters would be fantastic (or acceptable).
I agree with many of the arguments posted, but the conclusion do not make sense to me.

Anyway, sticking to the topic.
Looks like people are figuring out that the Hurricanes brand is not popular around Carolina and that no one really cares about the team. To the point that the Whalers have more impact in hockey community than them, after 20 years not existing.

Just move the team somewhere else I would say.

The Hurricanes' attendance is higher than Pittsburgh's in the early 2000's, and about the same as Chicago's in the mid-2000's. Good thing people figured out that the Blackhawks and Penguins' brands were not popular in Chicago and Pittsburgh and that nobody really cared about the teams, and that they just moved them somewhere else.

 

Oh, wait. Actually, they just started winning again, and people came back.

Carolina's missed the playoffs 8 years in a row, which tends to kill a fan base. There's nothing wrong with the brand, it's actually quite popular and well liked there. But, mostly through Peter Karmanos' refusal to spend money on anything, it's just been allowed to atrophy for a while.

 

When Raleigh has huge swaths of empty seats during the playoffs (coughOttawacough), come back and we'll talk.

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24 minutes ago, BringBackTheVet said:

And ironically Those purchases support the hurricanes. 

I thought the state of Connecticut got all the IP when the team moved -- there were no Whalers throwbacks in NHL games for years.

 

15 minutes ago, eastfirst107 said:

a bad post

Whoa, no attempts at moral high ground from vulture markets, please

 

♫ oh yeah, board goes on, long after the thrill of postin' is gone ♫

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18 minutes ago, the admiral said:

I thought the state of Connecticut got all the IP when the team moved -- there were no Whalers throwbacks in NHL games for years.

 

Whoa, no attempts at moral high ground from vulture markets, please

 

 

Oh maybe, idk. If so then how is Carolina going to wear the throwbacks? License the logo from the city of Hartford?

"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

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I believe the state of Connecticut sold the Whalers' IP back to the NHL several years ago, which is why there is such an abundance of throwback merch. There was nothing for a few years while the state still held the marks.

 

Wear the throwbacks against the Penguins, and let's all get conflicted about Ron Francis.

On 1/25/2013 at 1:53 PM, 'Atom said:

For all the bird de lis haters I think the bird de lis isnt supposed to be a pelican and a fleur de lis I think its just a fleur de lis with a pelicans head. Thats what it looks like to me. Also the flair around the tip of the beak is just flair that fleur de lis have sometimes source I am from NOLA.

PotD: 10/19/07, 08/25/08, 07/22/10, 08/13/10, 04/15/11, 05/19/11, 01/02/12, and 01/05/12.

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Yeah, I think I remember that sale, with the IP going to the league and not the Hurricanes themselves. When True North got the Jets IP, it was from the league, not the Coyotes who were owned by the league (though I'm sure that made it easier). 

 

It's weird because aside from rights to the old logos, the Karmanos organization had a lot of continuity between the Whalers and Hurricanes. They even took the old goal horn from the Mall.

♫ oh yeah, board goes on, long after the thrill of postin' is gone ♫

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A Complete History of Pucky the Whale

 

Quote

 After only a year in Hartford, the identity of the Whalers has inexplicably become tied to the cetacean which their harpoon logo is presumably targeting. The team became to be informally known as “The Whale”, a nickname that is still in common use forty years later. Ducharme, whose ability to sense the pulse of the Hartford market can not be overstated, launched what may be the first viral mascot-naming campaign in sports history. Over 14,000 submissions were accepted through the decidedly low-tech means of a ballot box in the team store. The name “Puckie” was ultimately chosen and commemorated in a children’s book. The story, for the record, is a strange tale of an orphaned whale left abandoned in the backyard of professional hockey player in the suburbs of Hartford. His children Susie and Jamie adopt the whale, who enjoys swimming in the pool and eating minnows but suffers from severe depression. He is eventually able to find happiness by attending hockey games, and in an oddly meta turn of events, is named as the result of a viral marketing campaign kicked off by Chuck Kaiton.

 

puckybook.jpg

 

Maybe the Whalers were doomed when their clinically depressive mascot couldn't even love hockey. It certainly doesn't augur well for Blooper, The Baseball-Tolerating Penis.

 

♫ oh yeah, board goes on, long after the thrill of postin' is gone ♫

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