The Business of Hockey: Hartford Whalers' Founder Shares Stories Around the Ice

In the mid-'80s the Hartford Civic Center rocked to life with rabid fans donning green and white rooting hard for their beloved Whalers, as they battled teams on their home ice. Hartford had a thriving franchise in the National Hockey League.

Nightlife thrived around the Civic Center, as families and friends went shopping and had dinner at city restaurants before the games, then socialized at bars afterward.

Howard Baldwin and a partner were the men responsible for bringing professional hockey to Hartford. They sold the team in 1988 and it moved in 1997 and is now the Carolina Hurricanes.

"To get someone off their fannies to come to an event, you have to give them a heck of a lot more than the event itself," Baldwin told an audience of business professionals and politicians attending Monroe Means Business at The Waterview, 215 Roosevelt Drive, Thursday night.

Baldwin, who currently owns the Connecticut Whale, New York Rangers' minor league hockey team, and produces movies, including Ray, was the guest speaker at the Monroe Economic Development Commission's annual event.

Baldwin worked his way up the ladder in professional hockey. In 1967, he started out as business manager of the New Jersey Devils, then the minor league team for the Philadelphia Flyers. The next year he was promoted, serving as the Flyers ticket manager and sales and promotion manager.

At only 28, he became a founder and partner of the World Hockey Association's Boston-based New England Whalers in 1971, and within five years he was president of the entire league.

Baldwin said it was the Whalers' general manager Jack Kelley's wife who came up with the team's name.

The team moved to Hartford in 1974 because it did not believe it could compete with the Bruins in Boston, according to Baldwin. He said the team was later convinced to drop New England, changing its name to the Hartford Whalers.

The Roof Fell In

The Whalers steadily grew in popularity, but there were obstacles along the way.

"Many of you may remember when the Civic Center roof collapsed," he said of the winter of 1978, when the weight of heavy snow took a toll on the building. "Many thought the league would fold because we were the linchpin."

But the teams of the World Hockey Association came together and devised a plan to ensure every ticket was sold in a smaller venue in Springfield, Mass., where the Whalers would play their home games.

"It was small. We played the Montreal Canadians," Baldwin said, adding with a chuckle, "I remember Guy Lafleur saying, 'This doesn't look like a professional hockey building."

Baldwin was among the key players when the WHA merged with the NHL in 1979. He said the Whalers' first 10 or 12 home games were played in Springfield before it played its first game in the Civic Center as an NHL team.

"Before you knew it, we had the smallest market and the smallest building," Baldwin said of the Whalers time in the NHL. "In five years we were at the bottom of the heap."

But Baldwin said 1985 and '86 was a turning point. Ticket sales never dipped below 74 percent. Baldwin said the team "caught fire" in the city and that Hartford hosted the NHL All-Star game.

"We had the third highest revenue in the National Hockey League," he said. "By 1988, the corporate community said, 'We've done our thing. It's profitable. Time to sell."

The team changed hands a couple more times before moving to Carolina. Baldwin said he couldn’t help from feeling good about the Hurricanes losing $125 million after the move, because they did not do things the way he thought they should have in running the team.

"I have a saying, 'The grass is always greener until you smoke it,'" Baldwin said, as the room erupted in laughter. "They found out the hard way down there."

Toilet Paper Night

Baldwin was part of a group of investors to become the first American entrepreneurs to break through the Iron Curtain and become a 50 percent partner with the Russian government in owing the famous CCCP Red Army team in Moscow in the mid-90s.

He said he thought it would help with player procurement for his minor league hockey team at home.

Baldwin soon found that no Russian fans were going to the games. "They didn't care," he said of the national team.

So he brought in public relations people from the U.S. to liven up the arena and a series of promotions put fannies in the seats.

"We had free toilet paper night," Baldwin said, drawing laughter. "That filled the building. We had a free can of beer night, but we should have given it out after the game."

Things were going so well, that the Wall Street Journal wrote an article about what Baldwin and his partners were doing in Russia. Then organized crime spoiled the party.

"We were advised to pay some people," Baldwin said. "I didn't want to do that, so I left. The concession guy refused to pay and was gunned down in front of the arena."

Making a Comeback

Baldwin said he is now happy to be heading the Whale, the minor league team for the New York Rangers. But the entrepreneur is still thinking big. He hopes to bring an NHL team back to Connecticut.

In the '70s and '80s Baldwin said there was a philosophy to acquire the land around a sports arena, so development there could provide the complementary businesses needed to make the area thrive. But that is something sports franchises have moved away from in the '90s and 2000s, according to Baldwin.

He is now working with corporate leaders with the same mentality that enabled professional hockey to thrive as it had when Baldwin owned the Whalers.

Baldwin said, "Hopefully the NHL will see that Hartford is a great place for hockey and come back."