HFBoards - View Single Post - Question about Hartford Whalers in the mid 80's

Lead Role in a Cage · 12-18-2012, 02:10 AM

Looking through the rosters of the Whalers in the mid 80's I see there was quite some potential.

The 84/85 roster saw a 21 year old Ron Francis in his fourth season, a 19 year old Sylvain Turgeon in his second season scoring 31 goals in 64 games coming off a rookie season potting 40, along with rookies Kevin Dineen (20), Ray Ferraro (20) Ulf Samuelsson (20), and Sylvain Cote (18). A 28 year old Mike Liut was added to the team during the 84/85 season.

These were young talented players, who all had long careers with different amount of success, none of which were older than 21 at the time. Young centers, wingers, defenders and a Mike Liut who still had some years left to provide solid goaltending.

I think there could have been plenty of room to improve as a club and franchise with this "core" moving forward so my question is, why didn't they take off?

I figure this is the place to ask this question.

12-18-2012, 02:10 AM	#1
Lead Role in a Cage Registered User Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 302 vCash: 500	Question about Hartford Whalers in the mid 80's Looking through the rosters of the Whalers in the mid 80's I see there was quite some potential. The 84/85 roster saw a 21 year old Ron Francis in his fourth season, a 19 year old Sylvain Turgeon in his second season scoring 31 goals in 64 games coming off a rookie season potting 40, along with rookies Kevin Dineen (20), Ray Ferraro (20) Ulf Samuelsson (20), and Sylvain Cote (18). A 28 year old Mike Liut was added to the team during the 84/85 season. These were young talented players, who all had long careers with different amount of success, none of which were older than 21 at the time. Young centers, wingers, defenders and a Mike Liut who still had some years left to provide solid goaltending. I think there could have been plenty of room to improve as a club and franchise with this "core" moving forward so my question is, why didn't they take off? I figure this is the place to ask this question.