The Day Brass Bonanza Died

The Day Brass Bonanza Died
By Steve Gallichio, Hartford Correspondent

"Ladies and gentlemen," Greg Gilmartin would say, "here are YOUR HARTFORD WHALERS!!!"
Greg Gilmartin was the public address announcer for many years at the Hartford Civic Center. For a couple of seasons in the mid 90's, Gilmartin disappeared from the scene - off to pursue business interests out of the state. A string of Gong Show contestants took his place, but could never quite replace him.
But in the fall of 1996, Gilmartin returned to Hartford and to the Civic Center, along with several other parts of Hartford Whalers lore. Like franchise WHA scoring leader Tom Webster and former captain Randy Ladouceur, returning as assistant coaches. Like former anthem singer Tony "Red Shoes" Harrington. And of course, like Kevin Dineen, the heart and soul of the history of the franchise, returning to captain the Good Ship Whale.
All of these memories returned to Hartford in the past handful of months. And all of them were introduced, both then and now, by Greg Gilmartin with the same phrase.
"Ladies and gentlemen, here are YOUR HARTFORD WHALERS!!!"
I've always liked to get lettered jerseys of my favorite players, my Whalers. There's a Rick Ley replica from the World Hockey Association, way back before the roof collapsed and the '91 Club' followed the team religiously to Springfield before coming home at last.
There was the Joel Quenneville model from the mid 80's, a jersey that got laughed at in 1983 when he was an unknown defenseman with a funny name on a bad team. It didn't get laughed at three years later.
The most recent was a Jeff O'Neill home. Lucky I held off on the Hnat Domenichelli model. I still want a Sami Kapanen.
The first one I ever got for myself, though, didn't have a player's name on it. It was back around 1980, and I was playing street hockey with the other kids in the neighborhood. We were the "Webster Street Whalers." It was a number double-zero, with my own last name on the back.
I still have pictures of myself in my first Whalers jersey, with my oversized helmet, and shorts over my pants to look like hockey pants. I don't have the jersey anymore, don't remember when it went away.
When the announcement came last week that the team was ending its stay in Hartford, I talked to a lot of people about their thoughts and emotions in the wake of the move. What I will always remember is how much so many people focused, not just on their own loss, but on how much of a loss we felt for those that would come after us.
We talked about fathers and sons, about mothers and daughters, about brothers and sisters. About how we were brought up with our Whalers by our parents, and how much we regretted not being able to pass that along to the next generation.
Over and over, it wasn't just about a hockey team. It was about a hole in our lives, a part of our past, present, and future taken away.
Someone told me that he now, officially, had nothing left to talk to his father about. Several more talked with sadness about explaining to their kids, who couldn't possibly understand, why their Whalers were going away.
Some of us had a tough enough time explaining to ourselves.
The announcement came with nine games left in the season. It felt like the season ended immediately at that moment. I wasn't sure if I would feel right about going to the last few home games; too many memories, too many emotions. But then I realized that this would be the last chance to see my Whalers. I couldn't pass that up, even if the next game meant dealing with Ranger fans in Hartford.
So I hit the Mall early, figuring I'd stop by the Whalers gift shop before the game. There were all those jerseys I wanted to buy, jerseys of my Whalers. Kevin Eleven. Sami Kapanen. My Whalers.
I wandered around the store for a while, looking at the same t-shirts and sweatshirts and pennants and posters that I'd seen a thousand times before.
The jerseys were almost all gone already. Oh, there was a pre-lettered Gerald Diduck jersey still kicking around (ha!), and a handful of the awful new Starter blue road jerseys; awful because the CCM version of the jerseys from previous years were a much more attractive shade of blue than the Starter abominations.
I figured I could always mail order a CCM jersey through The Hockey News classifieds section. But suddenly, it felt like receiving it in the mail would be just like when I got my "classic" New England Whalers jersey in the mail a few years ago; great to have, but a tip of the cap to the past. Sadly, today's Whalers jersey already felt like a relic.
I circled the perimeter of the store, hoping to catch a glimpse of something, anything, that I hadn't ever seen before. Something that I could buy, but not just for the sake of buying. I stopped along the near wall when my eyes caught a hanger full of the smallest hockey jerseys I'd ever seen. They were Whalers jerseys sized for newborn babies.
I thought about buying one. For someday. But then I looked at them and I stared and I thought about all of the babies that would never get to wear their own Hartford Whalers jersey. All of the children that would grow up without ever knowing about the Whalers as anything more than something from their Dad's scrapbook, a yellowed pennant on an office wall, a faded picture in a drawer.
All of the babies that would grow up to be the men and women of the state of Connecticut, that would never have their own Hartford Whalers.
So I bought nothing. I shuffled out of the store and into the arena, hoping to hear Greg Gilmartin for one of the last times, introducing our Hartford Whalers.
But overnight, the words had changed. The team skated out onto the ice, and Greg Gilmartin's voice boomed something subtly but unmistakably different.
"Ladies and gentlemen, here are *the* Hartford Whalers!"
It was that simple. They weren't *our* Hartford Whalers anymore. Peter Karmanos had seen to that.