The latest attempt to revive the beloved Hartford Whalers is taking place in the AHL and it is all thanks to one huge Whalers fan, Howard Baldwin.
It has been 13 long years since the Whalers moved to Raleigh, North Carolina and for those 13 years, countless Hartford hockey fans have been heartbroken. Yes, they had the Hartford Wolf Pack, the AHL affiliate of the New York Rangers, but it was just not the same without having Pucky the Whale at games.
News has recently come out that some of the best-selling NHL merchandise has the one and only Hartford Whalers logo printed on them. The Whaler faithful has been strong and their efforts have finally been noticed.
This is when Baldwin comes in. Baldwin, a huge fan of the Hartford Whalers, has been working constantly to bring back the franchise for years now. With this news, it seems that the time has come to bring some reincarnation of the Whalers into this world.
Howard Baldwin has taken over the Hartford Wolf Pack and will be renaming the team the Connecticut Whalers. Everything should clear by next week and a generous amount of Hartford Whalers fans should be pleased.
Baldwin has already started selling Connecticut Whalers t-shirts on his own website, WhalersProShop.com.
On the t-shirt, we can see the new logo for the team, which of course shares the same color scheme with the original logo, but does not provide an exact replica of the original due to copyright issues. A few disgruntled fans may hate the logo, but for now this is the closest thing to the franchise's revival since the Hartford Wolf Pack.
Many fans believe that the Connecticut Whalers' introduction to the AHL could very well be the first step in bringing the Hartford Whalers back to the NHL. However, there is a very little chance that happens as a few other cities such as Quebec and Hamilton have been looking for an NHL team for quite some time now.
