Finally, we can move on from the NHL now that the Rangers have severed relations with Howard Baldwin’s Whalers Sports & Entertainment? Baldwin, a dedicated Hartford booster who deserves our thanks for his dream, may still have something up his sleeve, but the news from colleague Paul Doyle isn’t good.
Gov. Malloy has made pretty clear that there was never going to be a state-funded renovation of the XL Center, where the Connecticut Whale struggled to attract customers. There isn’t the fan support. The corporate support of the Whaler era is gone. There aren’t even enough customers to support a state-subsidized market, let alone an NHL team.
Maybe now there will be more discussion about what downtown does have. There are hundreds of new residents who are making a commitment to Hartford. There’s a new downtown plan for development — the iQuilt — that could link together the city’s many attractions and bring new energy, and visitors, to Hartford. And there’s still good hockey in the future when UCONN upgrades and brings some of the best college teams in the country to town in 2014.
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4 Responses to Baldwin Out, Whale Snuffed; There’s Plenty Of Hope Still Here
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Malloy, CT’s own Captain Ahab, will kill his Whale.
The Demographics here are just plain bad and getting worse for pro-hockey. Stagnant population growth, ever increasing local (UConn) competition for sports dollars, a recession, and the aging fixed income white flighters the burbs.
Hartford will regret losing AHL Hockey and taking a back seat to Portland, Manchester, Providence, Springfield, Worcester, and Bridgeport.
Won’t the New Britain busway ensure AHL Sell Outs?
If only Malloy had used the logic on the busway, then the state surely wouldn’t be moving forward with that wasteful project.
4500 fans/game doesn’t equal pro no matter who you are. The 4500 averages the very few friday/saturday night games of 10,000+ and the more numerous weekday and sunday games where barely anybody decides to show up. Yea, the NHL is a nice idea, but 4 games of 10,000+ out of a 38-40 game home season isn’t exactly encouraging.
Guess I’ll head to Springfield in the fall of 2013 to get my hockey fix…
4,500 fan average………the problem is not the lack of fans……….4,500 is due to the lack of the NHL. No one, I mean no one, who has had filet mignon, is going to want to eat hot dogs on a daily basis……………unless you are at an NHL game. SORRY, but that is what it is. Bring an NHL team back here, and you will see people filling whichever arena exists at the time.
If it weren’t for Howard Baldwin, this city would have never seen professional hockey in any form. To throw him out with the bath water is to throw away ANY chance of the NHL (real hockey)returning to Hartford.
You can i-quilt all you want, nothing is going to come of it. Do we want professional sports or do we want a nice little walking path to a city that can’t even support a grocery store?
This city would be hopping if the city and state allowed Steve Winn to build his casino, with no cost to city or state, in downtown Hartford. Not only would we still have NHL hockey but we would probably have the NBA as well.
The city and state shoujld never hacd turned