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
