“Hartford Whalers merchandise is the hottest selling merchandise in the NHL.”
If I asked you about what year that headline came from, you’d probably guess sometime in the early 1990s and feel pretty confident about it. How about if I told you it came from 2010? Turns out, the team with the most stuff flying off the shelves at sports merchandise retailer Mitchell & Ness is a team that hasn’t been around since 1997.
And yet, all these years later, newly made Whalers jerseys, T-shirts and caps are among the hottest sellers of all NHL teams.
“It’s been one of the top lines, and it’s not just Connecticut,” said Marc D’Amelio, an East Coast sales representative for Mitchell & Ness, a major vendor of Whalers T-shirts, jackets and caps. “Nationally, it’s in the top five, no problem.”
The Whalers can’t touch the champion Chicago Black Hawks this year, but the distinctive blue, green and white merchandise could easily tie with the Detroit Redwings, Boston Bruins and New York Rangers, D’Amelio said.
Recently, the Whaler logo has gotten some high profile exposure, too. Adam Sandler wore a Whalers T-shirt in the film “Grown Ups.” The NHL also approved the use of the logo in a video game, and, according to Ihor Stelmach, the Westfarms store’s general manager, the rapper 50 Cent wore a Whalers shirt at a concert last year and threw some team shirts into the crowd.