| Kilpatrick | | SAVE | | Colley | | | | THE | | | | 1 | | COLISEUM! | | 9 | ______________ _______________ ____________
John Tortorella, Stanley Cup Champion |
| Tortorella, an assistant coach under Rick Dudley in 1988-89, coached the Tampa Bay Lightning to the 2004 Stanley Cup, winning Game 7 on Monday, June 7. The New Haven job was Tortorella's first at the AHL level; he went to the Buffalo Sabres the following year with Dudley. |
Scoring Summaries from various games I attended over six years of following the Nighthawks. There's no big reason for these; they're just games I went to and kept score at. Hopefully, they'll give you some nostalgia value.
A Player Database, taken from the Hockey News' yearbooks, of a (hopefully) mostly-complete list of Nighthawks from 1985-1991. Though this has positions and stuff, check out the stats above for a complete list of players.
A column I wrote for my high school newspaper after the Nighthawks became the Senators about the demise of the Hawks.
More info to come--I'd post year-by-year stats, but that would duplicate what Ralph Slate has done more effectively elsewhere, so support his work for that stuff. Maybe some semblance of a uniform number database along the lines of the one I have on my Rangers' cumulative roster page will be possible eventually.
Also, when the Beast of New Haven (AHL 1997-1999) honored Tom Colley in March 1998, I had the opportunity to sit down with him for a couple of minutes. Unfortunately, the organization I worked for at the time didn't want to run a feature on Colley, so my notes kind of got put aside. If I find them, and if I get a spare moment or two to transcribe and edit, I might be able to get some kind of story up on the site. Of course, by then it will unfortunately be wildly old, but still.
Why we DON'T count the Senators
The Sports Zone of Windsor, Ontario, sells old jerseys (as you'll note from the URL) from several different sports. Most germane to this site are a trio (as of August 2002) of old Nighthawks sweaters, though the nickname is misspelled "Knighthawks" on the site: Vintages 1982 (before my time), 1986 (my first and my favorite), and 1992 (I have to check at some point about whether these differ substantially from 1989. At some point, the color of the back numeral changed, IIRC). I know nothing about this company, so I can't speak to quality, but just seeing these sweaters again and thinking they might be available was pretty cool.
For those out for a little reminiscing about that goofy-looking bird with his wings raised and his beak sticking out, the goods, courtesy Ralph Slate (sometimes I think this is more his site than mine): The 1972-73 Nighthawks logo. Aside from colors, it didn't change all that much over the years; some years there was an outline around the bird and its wings, some years not, but from the red, white and blue through the blue and gold and back to the red, white and blue and finally to the black and silver, that goofy-looking bird was with us. And he's still hanging on my wall.... (Links at Ralph Slate's Hockey Logo Archive page, highly recommended. See also his amazing Internet Hockey Database.
"You can't play hockey in a mall, Ben" --Section 14 banner, ca. 1988
The New Haven Coliseum stands on its deathbed. Our favorite "eyesore" could be torn down as early as this fall if the funding to do so, reportedly about $10 million, comes through. The New Haven Knights of the UHL, either way, have suspended operations, and New Haven is without pro hockey in 2002-03 for the sixth time in 11 years. It certainly seems like that drought will go on for a long, long, long time if the barn comes down. Hockey in New Haven will be missed. And if it does indeed come down, so will the Coliseum, where I grew up, be missed, along with Section 14, whose denizens were always at the very least a model for loyalty.
