A Fart of a Deal

March 4^th will forever be one of the biggest watershed moments in NHL history.  The infamous trade between the Penguins and Whalers handed the Penguins Ron Francis and Ulf Samuelsson, a Hall-of-Fame forward and a stud defender, and turned them into a championship caliber team; meanwhile, the Whalers received three mediocre players andentered into a downward spiral that resulted in an ownership change, declining attendance, and relocation to North Carolina.

            And yet, looking back at what information I could find from the time of the trade, it seems most experts and publications like The Hockey News thought that the Whalers got the better deal, or at least broke even with the Pens.  It’s hard to believe that such an obviously lopsided deal in favor of the Penguins was actually considered to be a win for the Whalersat the time.ZarleyZalapski, John Cullen, and Jeff Parker were evidently considered a pretty good haul for Ron Francis and Ulf Samuelsson, a suggestion that genuinely makes my brain hurt thinking about it.

            To be fair, the Whalers’ hand was kind of forced.  Based off the twenty year retrospective from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Samuelsson was threatening to leave for Sweden, and the owner Richard Gordon wanted rid of Francis.  I guess it wouldn’t be the Hartford Whalers without having an owner completely screw things up, though that does make a bit more sense as to why this would be considered a decent deal for them.  Three potentially good prospects for two guys surely on their way out would be a fair deal better than just straight up losing them for nothing, and this is the sort of dealing that Jim Rutherford has used to keep the Penguins machine churning in recent years.

            The problem is, Rutherford has yet to deal a true superstar player like Francis or Samuelsson, let alone two of them in one deal.Then again, he hasn’t exactly been on the verge of losing a star or two for free, and they’ve mostly been happy in Pittsburgh, although being a cup contender as opposed to a flaming pile of poo is certainly a bonus.  I can see why the Whalers made the deal, and I can understand why this was considered to be a decent haul at the time based on the alternative of losing one or both unhappy stars.  It’s just a shame that they were ever in that position in the first place and that it turned into such an epic blunder that effectively killed the team for good.

Karmanos’ Crap Keeps Killing Canes

Karmanos’ Crap Keeps Killing Canes

          It has been nearly a month since the first of two “Whaler Nights” for the Carolina Hurricanes, and I am still left dumbfounded that this was ever considered a good idea.Watching the Hurricanes pretending to be the Hartford Whalers was like watching a divorced woman speed dating in her wedding dress: a blatant attempt at drawing attention and approval from NHL fans while dressing up in their heart breaking past.  I guess it’s an improvement over completely ignoring their past, but surely there is a balance to be struck between complete denial and blatant publicity stunts.  All “Whaler Night” did was expose the Hurricanes as a franchise weighed down by their old identity while desperately seeking approval from their own fans.  It says something about a franchise that the best way to gin up support is to claim an altogether different identity they have tried to suppress for nearly a quarter of a century.

I don’t place all the blame on Tom Dundon.  Sure, it’s a massive popularity stunt to use the old Whalers’ persona to try and build support for the modern-day Hurricanes calamity, but at least he is acknowledging the past.The true villain in this whole charade is the same man it always has been:  Peter Karmanos.  The man who finally sold majority control of the team this past summer still has a massive impact on the current state of the Carolina Hurricanes, one that will take some time to rebuild from.

            Karmanos’ legacy will always be remembered for stabbing the people of Hartford in the back and moving the beloved Whalers to North Carolina, but perhaps he should also be remembered for being an utterly terrible owner.  During his twenty-four year tenure as owner of the Whalers/Hurricanes, Karmanos did manage some success with three separate playoff runs advancing further than the Whalers ever did, but otherwise spent nearly a quarter of a century building up an abject failure of an organization.  Out of twenty-four years under Karmanos, a whopping nineteen of them ended without a playoff berth.  Even the few bright spots, the three deep runs they had in the 2000s, were quickly followed each time by a significant regression.  In retrospect, they seem more like fluky outliers in a data set that shows a consistent lack of progress or achievement.  He even cast aside his GM Jim Rutherford and his own son Jason Karmanos, two longtime members of the Whalers/Hurricanes organization, only to witness them revitalize the Penguins into back-to-back cup winners.  Other than the 2006 Stanley Cup victory and the 2002 runner up finish, there has not been much tangible success at all since Karmanos took over.  No wonder Dundon decided to turn back the clock with “Whalers Night.”  There certainly isn’t much recent to celebrate the current team, nor has there been in a decade.

            It is especially telling that the “Whaler Night” promotions have generated far more publicity and excitement than any events honoring the 2006 team.Here is a team with an actual notable achievement, and yet it is far more noteworthy to harken back to the days of being a loveable loser squeezed out by the Bruins, Rangers, Islanders, and Devils.  Those Whalers teams had some big names like Mark Howe and Kevin Dineen, but they were never anything more than fodder for the genuine contenders in the Adams Division.  And yet, they are far more fondly remembered than the actual championship team decades later simply because they had a certain charm to them.  One could conceivably forgive them for struggling in their cramped environment without the aid of revenue sharing or a salary cap to level the playing field.  It is far harder to justify the struggles in a much larger market with the aid of these balancing measures, especially with top talents like Eric Staal and Jeff Skinner playing for them.  There is just no reason to care about this hockey team right now other than the fact they were once a far better-looking hockey team with a cool logo and some great individual players.

            In a sense, this makes Karmanos especially culpable in the “Whalers Night” promotions that seek to appropriate the long-neglected Whaler legacy and build excitement for yet another mediocre Hurricanes team falling out of the playoff race.  Even though Peter Karmanos is no longer the main decision maker, his failures as an owner have tainted the Carolina Hurricanes in a way that Tom Dundonis only now beginning to remedy.  I just wish he didn’t appropriate Whaler culture to do it.

TH68