Mark Anderson Toasts Hartford Whalers Fans at 29th Anniversary
More than a dozen hartford whalers fans packed Bobby V’s Restaurant and Sports Bar in Windsor Locks on a Monday evening to mark the 29th anniversary of the team’s final game. Mark Anderson raised his glass to the Whalers’ last game, keeping a ritual alive nearly 30 years after the franchise left Connecticut.
The gathering centered on a toast Anderson delivered for the club’s final night. “We always toast the boys, in honor of the last game,” he said before adding, “Twenty-nine years. God bless them. We miss you forever. Go Whale. Long live the Whale.”
Mark Anderson Leads The Toast
Members of the Hartford Whalers Booster Club wore blue and green gear as planes departing Bradley International Airport passed overhead outside the bar. The location gave the evening a local feel even as the team being remembered left the state decades ago.
The Whalers’ final game came in 1997 against the Tampa Bay Lighting at the Hartford Civic Center. After that, the franchise rebranded as the Carolina Hurricanes and moved hundreds of miles away from Connecticut.
Jim Lamoureux Remembers The Crowd
Jim Lamoureux, a Booster Club secretary and former season ticket holder, said he still misses the atmosphere around Whalers games. “You got to know people like, there they were kind of like friends and family, you said to the people behind you, ‘How'd your kid do in their little league game this week? Or How's your wife feeling she missed the last game?’” he said.
That kind of attachment helps explain why the brand still pulls people back into the room. Kurt Badenhausen said the fan base comes down to “nostalgia and city pride,” and Arunan Arulampalam said Whalers merchandise remains among the NHL’s best sellers.
Hartford Still Pushes For Sports
Arulampalam, Hartford’s mayor, often wears a Whalers pin and said residents stopped him while he was running for office to ask for the team’s return. “When I was running for mayor, people would stop me on the street and say, ‘Bring back the Whalers,’” he said, recalling the message they gave him: “Do whatever you can to get the Whalers back.”
He also said Hartford is a city with this size media market and no professional sports teams. “It kills me that we are a city with this size media market and no professional sports teams, and I continue to believe that we would not just be able to support a major league sports franchise,” he said. “But I think most major league sports franchises would be able to thrive here in the city.”
For the fans at Bobby V’s, the anniversary was not a reunion with a lost era so much as proof that the old bond never fully broke. The toasts in Windsor Locks showed that the Whalers still have a place in Hartford’s sports conversation, and in the city’s push to bring a major league team back.
