The Whale

I'm sitting at work watching the Carolina Hurricanes roar back on the Montreal Canadiens and, I'll be honest, it sickens me.

That "fans" in Raleigh, N.C. even get an NHL team is infuriating enough, that the NHL pillaged the good people of Hartford, Conn. in order to put another squad in NASCARland and, in so doing, ridded professional sports of the greatest team logo in the world of athletics, was a downright tragedy.

I, my friends, remain a Hartford Whalers fan. Ron Francis was the first non-Winnipeg Jet professional athlete to give me an autograph and that had me hooked. I bought a Whalers jersey for my hockey practises, watched the team religiously tease me with first-round playoff exits that were littered with so-close-but-oh-so-far efforts and then eventually swore off the bastard league that took away my two beloved teams.

Hartford Whalers, we hardly knew ye.

In honour of the harpooned Whale, I give you this, the most catchy of catchy tunes, The Hartford Whalers Victory March (nee: The Brass Bonanza), played after every goal by Kevin Dineen, Ray Ferraro, Terry Yake, Pat Verbeek or even Randy Ladouceur. Back in the days when the NHL wasn't playing the latest techno/trance song to pump up its team, when organs were regulars in the rafters of old barns, when divisions were named after great men like Adams, Smythe and Norris, and the closest the deep south got to having a team was trying to remember what that "Flames" team was that played somewhere in Georgia.

March on Whalers.

Here's to an early Carolina exit so the people of Raleigh can go back to cheering for what they actually know something about: