Harvest-Properties.com Whale Bowl

The NHL’s first “Winter Classic” garnered positive media attention and was deemed a success. Over 70,000 people packed into Ralph Wilson stadium outside of Buffalo, NY to watch the Penguins top the Sabres 2-1 in a shootout.

Four years later, on the day before the NHL’s Heritage Classic, an outdoor game in Calgary, AB, the CT Whale would take on the Providence Bruins at an outdoor clusterfuck known as “Rentschler Field”. After Robert Kraft officially dicked over the state of Connecticut with negotiations to move the New England Patriots, Rentschler Field was built as the home stadium for UCONN football. A 40,000 seat monstrosity built on a former Pratt & Whitney airfield in East Hartford, CT.

Lets discuss the shortcomings of the venue, before discussing the game. So what’s wrong with Rentschler Field you say?

• Parking… 40,000 person capacity, but the main lot is only about double the size of the stadium, and has a capacity for roughly 2,000 vehicles.
• Seating… There were only 6,000 seats installed in a stadium to hold 40,000 people.  In a stadium built in 2003, 34,000 aluminum bleachers were installed

Now before everybody starts to rail me with the “weather” that evening, yes, it was brutally cold and windy (-10F Wind Chill), but if the logistical nightmares that presented themselves were corrected, it would have been a fun, enjoyable game aside from the seating.

I inherited the tickets from my uncle, the tickets were in two different rows in section 131.  Because of the cold weather, I knew not everybody was going to show up to the game, and they had only sold 1/2 of the capacity of the stadium, so finding seats together, somewhere in the stadium, wasn’t going to be a problem.  What I didn’t know before I got there, was that 80% of the stadium was aluminum bleachers.

After a filling dinner at Moe’s in West Hartford, we headed to the stadium, waited in a line of traffic for about 25 minutes before finally make it to the entrance of the main lot.  After waiting another 10 minutes or so, an employee moved some cones, and directed us down a dirt road.  We drove down the dirt road for what seemed like more than a mile, and after a while I turned back and looked to see the stadium fading in the distance.  After making my way almost to Brewer St, I was greeted by an arab man with a thick accent who told me “$15!”.  I said, “Are you kidding me?  We’re not even remotely close to the stadium, its 5 degrees outside and you want to rape me to park in a mud puddle more than a mile from the stadium?”  He responded, “$15!”, because apparently that was the only english he knew.  I told him that I wanted to leave, and he pointed to an exit lane that required me to cross 5 lanes of cars coming into the parking lot, great move Howard Baldwin.

View Larger Map

Driving down the dark road of despair and nearly bottoming out my car in a mud puddle I finally reached the old runway of the airfield and made my way back around to the front of the stadium.  I figured, nothing lost because the tickets were free, but when I got back around to the front of the stadium I noticed that the lot for Cabela’s was only about 1/2 full, and I saw a steady stream of people crossing from the Cabela’s lot to the stadium.  I thought to myself, surely people have to be parking there for free and walking over.  So I made a right and went into Cabela’s lot, and sure enough, plenty of people were parking at the far end of the lot and walking to the game, which was MUCH closer than the remote mud puddle they wanted to charge $15 to park in.

So with no money invested, we were free to check out the game, and if it was crap and we wanted to leave, I didn’t have to feel bad wasting $15 to park.  We gathered up the blankets, hats, scarves, gloves & other warming items from the car and started the trek towards the gates of Rentschler Field.  One thing that we forgot to grab from the car, which everyone else seemed to remember, was a huge bottle of hooch.

We made it to the front gates and got in line to enter, there were security guards at the gate doing pat-downs and the man with the rubber glove was surprisingly gentile.  They patted both my wife and I around the waist, presumably to check for firearms?  However, they didn’t ask me to unfold my blanket which could have easily concealed any alcohol, illegal drugs, firearms, or WMD’s I wanted to bring into the stadium, boy did I feel safe!

Upon entering the stadium there were groups of fans huddled everywhere to keep warm.  My wife went to use the restroom, and said she waited for about 5 minutes behind a group of people who she thought were waiting to use the restrooms, however they were only in there to keep warm.  We finally tried to may our way to our seats but were blocked because somebody thought it would be a good idea to leave 2 sections of the stadium full of ice & snow (how long was this event planned for?).  Thankfully, it wasn’t a problem because there were only about 7,000 people there and we were able to get front row seats (on aluminum bleachers), along the home team blue line closest to the rink.  Notice I said “closest to the rink”, thats because the genius engineers who constructed this rink did not “center” it on the football field, instead shifting it towards one end/side of the stadium.  

I’m eternally thankful I didn’t PURCHASE my tickets to this event.  The face value of each ticket was $30, and if the event was packed, and I had to sit in end-zone seats, on cold, muddy aluminum bleachers, with virtually no view of the rink I would have marched right into Jim Schoenfeld‘s office and shoved Ken Gernander up his ass.

We stayed for the first period to see the Whale score their first two goals, while begrudgingly trying to ignore the drunken antics throughout the stands, and the constant loop of the “Brass Bonanza”. Every college frat boy and his “bros” who scored free tickets were in attendance, because it was a place to get drunk and act like a fool.  Without an “XL Center” usher in sight, these fools had the green light to pretty much stand in front other ticket holders, shout obscenities, and unnecessarily bang on the bleachers with their metal crutches that seemed to serve no useful purpose other than to bang on the bleachers.

News reports after the game said that 21,600 tickets were sold, but roughly 15,000 people showed up for the game, which I find hard to believe.  There couldn’t have been more than 8,000 people in attendance.

Overall the game was a horrible experience, poorly executed, a logistical nightmare and if I were a top level executive at Harvest Properties, I wouldn’t want my company’s name associated with any aspect of Saturday’s calamity.  To the lingering Whaler fans, give up.  The Whalers are not coming back, they were the laughing stock of the NHL while they were in Hartford, barely eeking out a winning season in ’85, and getting obliterated in the other 3 post-season trips to follow.  Gary Bettman has already said that Hartford will not get another franchise, short of building a new arena.  Seriously, what team wants to play in an abandon shopping mall?

Howard Baldwin should tuck his tail between his legs and go back to producing films, and leave the memory of the Hartford Failures to be exactly that, a memory.

1 Comment

• Tweets that mention Harvest-Properties.com Whale Bowl | DJ Meltdown -- Topsy.com February 21, 2011 at 5:56 pm

  [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ajent Able, Ajent Able. Ajent Able said: Check out @djmeltdown : : Harvest-Properties.com Whale Bowl http://bit.ly/i9QpqH #failbowl [...]