True, but the team played that season as the New Haven Senators. And call us petty, but we (and here I mean the "me" we) felt a little abandoned. Part of it was our kinship with the New York Rangers, and thus a growing affiliation with the Binghamton Rangers--if the name of the New Haven team wasn't the same, then it wasn't the same team, and hell, I'm a Ranger fan!

More was a feeling that Peter Shipman, then-team owner, had sold out (in the punk sense) to OTT for capitulating in the nickname thing. There was no reason to bail out on a nickname that had history in the city for an expansion team to get its jollies by having its minor league affiliate bear its name (especially when the national trend in both baseball and hockey was to go in the opposite direction--just a few miles away, for instance, the New Britain Red Sox became the Hardware City Rock Cats).

So nothing against the fellas that played for the New Haven Senators in that one season--we've got no problems with you or your effort. It's just that you weren't Hawks.