In the Box with John Kreiser

In the Box with John Kreiser
Whale Were Destined to Swim From Hartford
By John Kreiser, Featured Columnist

Two writers headed for the 1994 Entry Draft in Hartford took a ferry for part of the trip. While enjoying the view of Long Island Sound, they contemplated the economics of the host team, whose new owners had promised to stay for at least four years. Their conclusion: Given the size of the market, the Whalers could sell out every game and still lose money--therefore, the odds that they would be able to make it through four seasons in Hartford were almost nonexistent.
They were right.
The Whalers' decision to move to parts unknown has little to do with the game of hockey. It has everything to do with the business of hockey--an enterprise in which small markets increasingly need not apply.
Hartford could play in the big leagues as long as the NHL's salary structure was held down, as it was in the John Ziegler-Alan Eagleson days. But as a small market sandwiched between a pair of Original Six franchises (Boston and the New York Rangers), the salary boom of the '90s made the demise of the Whale an inevitability.
The Bruin-Ranger scenario was undoubtedly a problem--as was the success of University of Connecticut basketball. Former Whaler Kelly Chase, recently traded to Toronto, called Hartford a "horse-bleep hockey town" and said that when the team played the Rangers or Bruins, "our only hope was to score early and take the crowd out of it." He feels the team will be at least 10 points better next season playing somewhere else.
Maybe the franchise could have hung on longer--perhaps even long enough to get the big-bucks new arena that owner Peter Karmanos was desperate for--had the Whalers been successful on the ice. But over the past decade, Hartford has been among the league's poorest performers. The last of the team's three winning seasons since entering the NHL in 1979 was 1989-90, and the team is battling to avoid a fifth straight non-playoff finish. Though attendance is up markedly this season after the major season-ticket drive last summer that followed Karmanos' first musings about moving, the small capacity of the Hartford Civic Center (14,660, plus luxury boxes that the Whalers don't control) ensures that the Whale can't generate the kind of revenue that big-city rivals like the Bruins and Rangers can. Karmanos claims losses of more than $30 million in his first two years of ownership; including the $20.5 million penalty for leaving early, team ownership estimates that losses will reach $90 million.
Connecticut Gov. John Rowland was willing to help the Whalers--up to a point. He agreed the team couldn't make money in the Civic Center and offered to build a new arena as well as guarantee projected revenues of $50 million per season. But Karmanos wanted more--specifically, rent-free use of the building, a lease of no more than 10 years, and, most important, to have the state cover the team's losses while the new arena was built--a figure that ranged from $20 million to more than $40 million, depending on how it took to build the facility.
That was more than Rowland felt the state could pay, so he let the Whalers swim away. No one knows where they'll land: Columbus, Ohio, could reel them in if voters OK a tax increase that would fund a new arena, and St. Paul, Minn., has expressed interest. Both had better open their checkbooks.
Meanwhile, Whaler fans in Hartford wait for the end, which could come in less than two weeks, when Tampa Bay comes to town on April 13 for the regular-season finale. There could be a stay of execution if the playoff push succeeds, but by the end of April, the Whalers could become the third of the four WHA survivors to move.
And what then?
It's not that there will never be hockey in the Mall again--the AHL and IHL are both interested, and as Quebec and Winnipeg have shown, losing an NHL team is not the end of civilization as we know it.
But there's sports, and then there's big-league sports. It's like the difference between a Volkswagen and a Cadillac: They both serve the same function, but there's a certain aura about a Caddy, just as there's a special feeling that goes along with being "major league." The question is: How much is being "major league" worth. The answer, apparently, was too much.
SINKING SEAFOOD: Unlike their fellow denizens of the deep, the San Jose Sharks have few business problems, even though their sellout string ended at 119 games when a few hundred tickets went unsold for the past three home games. On the ice, though, the Sharks are a mess.
GM Dean Lombardi has a team with solid veteran leadership and some attractive youngsters. What the Sharks don't have are the core of talented players in their prime that a successful team needs--they have just three players between the ages of 26 and 30, and neither Doug Bodger, Darren Turcotte, nor Greg Hawgood are impact players, anyway. That, combined with a run of injuries, has forced extra ice time on players who couldn't handle it. Defenseman Todd Gill, for example, has melted from 180 pounds to about 165; coach Al Sims says he looks anemic.
That would be a good description of the Sharks' play over the second half of the season. As injuries claimed veterans like Al Iafrate and Bernie Nicholls for long periods of time, the rest of the team hasn't been able to take up the slack. The Sharks are the worst offensive club in the NHL, with the only bright spot being the development of Jeff Friesen as a top-six forward.
The Sharks are tough--they've been among the league-leaders in penalty minutes all season. But that toughness too often results in bad penalties--San Jose has allowed 376 opposition power plays, 30 more than anyone else.
How untalented are the Sharks? A consensus of NHL insiders conducted by the San Jose Mercury News showed that at least 10 of the team's top 25 players either wouldn't be filling their current roles on a solid playoff team--or wouldn't be on the team at all.
The first hurdle facing GM Dean Lombardi is working out a deal with goaltender Ed Belfour, one of the NHL's best despite a 2-9-0 mark since coming from Chicago. But Belfour becomes an unrestricted free agent in July and will get plenty of offers if he gets onto the open market. After that, Lombardi says, he's concerned about defensive depth and a couple of forwards--though he's not willing to give away youngsters to get a top scorer.
That help could come in the draft, where the Sharks will have a good shot at landing Joe Thornton, regarded as a franchise center. Certainly, there will be no more drafts like the 1995 fiasco, when previous management gorged itself on six Finnish players, none of whom have made it in the NHL.
Even if they lose every game, the Sharks will still finish with more points than they did last season. But without some marked improvement soon, that trickle of empty seats is going to become a flood pretty soon.
GOING-AWAY GIFT: The New York Islanders are ecstatic with the play of newly acquired Robert Reichel, who has 12 points in five games since coming from Calgary. Reichel and linemates Ziggy Palffy and Bryan Smolinski give the Isles their best offensive trio since Pierre Turgeon, Steve Thomas and Derek King flourished in the early 1990s. Even better is the fact that the Isles got the Flames to pay about 40% of Reichel's salary over the next two seasons--that's about $1.3 million of the $3.4 million he's scheduled to make. Gives you the idea that someone wanted him out of town, doesn't it?
For his part, Reichel is gloriously happy to be out of Calgary. "Do I think they made a mistake? Yes, I do.," he told the Calgary Sun "Here, they have confidence in me." Of course, when a player has three points in his first game and adds nine points in back-to-back victories during a playoff drive, that confidence is easier to find..
KISS OF DEATH: Want to get off Long Island? Just win the Good Guy Award as voted by the local chapter of the Professional Hockey Writers Association. This year's winner, Marty McInnis, didn't even last long enough to get his award before being traded to Calgary. The same fate befell last year's winner, Mathieu Schneider, who was dealt to Toronto not long after winning. In all, the last nine winners of the Good Guy Award are no longer with the Islanders; on average, they last less than two years before leaving.
NOTHIN' BRUIN IN BOSTON: Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs has been taking shots at big-payroll clubs who, he feels, haven't had the results to match their payrolls. Maybe Jacobs is right and you can't buy a winner--certainly, the Rangers, Penguins and Blues, three teams Jacobs skewered for overspending, haven't put up the victories to go along with the money they spend. But at least those teams put out an on-ice product that generates some excitement. The only thing the Bruins have a chance to win is the Joe Thornton (No. 1 draft pick) Derby. They're about as exciting as watching ice melt.
STAT SHOTS: New Jersey must be the most disciplined team most of us will ever see. The Devils are allowing opponents less than three power plays per game--a figure unmatched in recent memory. The Devils are also last in the league in drawing power plays, with just 264 in 75 games. ...
Paul Laus must have sore hands. The Florida defenseman picked up his 35th fighting major last week, a figure unmatched in the past decade. However, he'll still have to go some to equal a dubious distinction set by Mike Peluso in the early 90s, when Peluso had more fighting majors than the entire Pittsburgh Penguins team (which won the Stanley Cup that season). ...
Who is the only visiting team to win twice in Denver this season? None other than the mighty Toronto Maple Leafs, whose 3-2 win on Saturday night gave them a pair of victories at McNichols Arena, where the Avalanche's 83 straight sellouts are the league's current high. ...
Do the Maple Leafs miss Doug Gilmour? Maybe not as much as everyone thought they would. Toronto is 5-5-5 since the big trade with New Jersey. However, Gilmour's addition has made a big difference for the Devils, who've lost only twice with him in the lineup since the Feb. 25 deal.