The Carolina Hurricanes are a whale of a hockey club. Pun intended.
The franchise that began its hockey life as the New England Whalers captured the Stanley Cup last weekend, winning the last three games of the best-of-seven final to clinch the series 4-2 and send the Las Vegas Golden Knights back to Sin City empty-handed.
As reporters covering the Stanley Cup championship have written over and over, Carolina did it with a suffocating defence and a relentless forecheck. That’s usually a winning combination in any rink in any league.
It was nice to see Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour hoist the hardware as he is reportedly one of the good guys in the game. ‘Mr. Intensity,’ says an NHL scout I know.
And, I couldn’t help thinking, as Canes captain Jordan Staal accepted hockey’s Holy Grail from NHL commish Gary Betman, what it might’ve been like to have had the big Thunder Bay native in the lineup of the former OHL Belleville Bulls for two seasons. You see, the Bulls passed on Staal in the 2004 OHL draft, instead opting for a much smaller forward named John Hughes.
Staal spent only two winters in the Peterborough Petes camp, but helped them win an OHL title in 2006 before turning pro with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Hughes was OK in Belleville, but was eventually traded to the former Brampton Battalion and wound up fashioning a lengthy and respectable pro career in Europe.
As for the origin of the Hurricanes franchise, the New England Whalers were an original member of the upstart World Hockey Association in 1972 when it set up shop as a rival major league to the NHL. The Whalers first played in Boston, then moved to Hartford in 1974 when the Connecticut capital opened the brand new Civic Centre.
The Whalers, who were part of the four-team merger with the NHL when the WHA folded in 1979, boasted the first-ever WHA championship club when they won the Avco World Trophy at the conclusion of the rebel circuit’s debut season in 1973.
Of note, Hartford’s first season in the NHL featured the legendary Mr. Hockey, Gordie Howe, in the Whalers lineup. Belleville’s Golden Jet, Bobby Hull, also dressed for Hartford that season but saw action in only nine games before retiring in November of 1978 as one of the greatest players in hockey history.
Years later, the Whalers developed a couple of other Belleville connections when Friendly City shinny products Rick Meather and Bobby Crawford arrived. Both players produced their career-high single-season NHL goal totals in Hartford: Meagher with 24 in 1981-82; Crawford with 36 in 1983-84.
Meagher went on to a lengthy career with the St. Louis Blues and won the Selke Trophy in 1989-90 as the NHL’s most outstanding defensive forward. Crawford later made a permanent home in Hartford and became heavily involved in the Whalers Alumni following his retirement as a player in 1989.
Trenton native John Garrett, who’d tended goal for the Whalers when they were in the WHA, spent two full NHL seasons and part of a third in Hartford, appearing in a total of 122 games. Garrett, who was a popular NHL TV analyst after his playing days, died on April 28 at the age of 74.
Meanwhile, purchased by wealthy Compuware CEO Peter Karmanos in 1994, the Whalers were beached five years later when Karmanos moved the team south to Raleigh, NC, after failing to receive increased funding from the state in a bid to build a new rink for the club in Hartford. (NOTE: Before settling on Raleigh, the Whalers ownership had considered relocating to Norfolk, VA.)
The Hurricanes bagged their first Stanley Cup banner in 2006 over the Edmonton Oilers in an exciting seven-game series that went the distance. Twenty years later, Carolina returned to the final and made it count, again.
NEED TO KNOW: The Whalers distinctive green and blue logo combining the letters H and W with the stylized tail of a whale remains among the best emblems ever designed for an NHL team.
