The Hartford Courant, January 11, 1975, by Tom Hine
The many years of waiting have long since disappeared.
It's now only a matter of hours.
The City of Hartford is on the major league sports map, and the New England Whalers have a home of their own.
It culminates at 7:30 tonight when the first WHA hockey puck is dropped at center ice in the two-day-old Hartford Civic Center.
And Hartford...and the Whalers...couldn't be happier.
It's been a long road.
That's exactly where the
Whalers have spent most of the last three month. On the road. Even
their 13 games in West Springfield were away from home, only a
temporary residence for a major league hockey team that awaited ever so
patiently for the final touches on a new Civic Center they'll move into
tonight.
The San Diego
Mariners are listed as the Whalers' first Hartford foes, but most of the fans don't know it.
The 10,507 who bought
tickets to assure a sellout tonight over ten days ago could care less
who the Whalers are playing. They just want to be there when it
happens.
Fancy words like icing, blue lines, red lines, creases, offsides...that will all come later.
Teams like the Jets, Aeros, Nordiques, Fighting Saints, Roadrunners..that will all come later, too.
And names like
Abrahamsson, Swain, Fotiu, Ley, Webster, Pleau...they, too, may be
unfamiliar to most patrons, but they'll be household words in only a
short time.
Hartford wanted major league hockey, and it will have it tonight.