1997-2000 Seasons

The Wolf Pack were a success right from the beginning, packing 12,934 fans into the Civic Center for their first-ever home game October 4, 1997 and finishing that season with 99 points under General Manager Don Maloney and Head Coach E.J. McGuire. The club kept its roll going into the postseason, knocking off in-state rival New Haven in the first round and coming from 3-2 down in the second round to oust Worcester in seven games. Unfortunately for Hartford, they lost their captain and inspirational leader Ken Gernander to a pulmonary embolism in the Conference Finals against Saint John. The series was tied at a game apiece when Gernander went down, and the Flames came down to Connecticut and swept three straight contests to advance to the Finals.

The next season, 1998-99, saw the Wolf Pack get off to an excellent start, winning their first four games and 10 of their first 14. The wins did not come as easily for the rest of the year, however, and the club finished at 35-31-6-5 for 83 points, the only time in the first five years of Wolf Pack history that the team did not hit the 40-win mark. The Pack closed the regular season on a roll, though, victorious in their last four games, and finished a solid second in the New England Division. Hartford swept close geographical rival Springfield in the first round of the playoffs, setting up a battle with the Providence Bruins, the regular-season champions, who had rolled up 56 wins and 120 points during the regular year. The Bruins would keep their magic going against the Wolf Pack with a four-game sweep, but with a few breaks, the Pack could easily have derailed the Providence express. Two of the games went to overtime (one a double-overtime marathon), one other was a one-goal decision and the fourth was a two-goal verdict.

Heading into the 1999-2000 campaign, the organization made a change behind the bench, bringing in veteran mentor John Paddock to guide the Wolf Pack. Upon joining the Pack, Paddock already had two Calder Cup championships on his resume, and he would enjoy another great season in his first year in Hartford. The Wolf Pack got out of the gate quickly again, and then got even hotter for the stretch run. The club would put together a stretch in which it lost only five out of 33 games (26-5-2), before clinching first-place overall on April 5th. The final record of 49-22-7-2 for 107 points would send Hartford into the Calder Cup playoffs as the league’s top seed, and position them well for a long run.
The dream season nearly ended with a thud in the first round against Springfield, as the upstart Falcons grabbed a two-games-to-one lead in the best-of-five series. The Wolf Pack recovered, though, and battled through two elimination games to move on. The Worcester IceCats went down in five games in the second round, and that set up a classic rematch with Providence in the Conference Finals. Again, the Pack found themselves with their backs against the wall, down three-games-to-one in the series against the defending champs, and 2-0 late in the second period of Game Five. They fashioned a stirring comeback, however, in the third period of Game Five, and then won Game Six in Providence (snapping the Bruins’ 16-game home postseason winning streak), setting the stage for a winner-take-all matchup that lived up to all expectations. Forced to come from behind again, the Wolf Pack found themselves down 2-1 in the third period, in front of a crowd of 10,623 at the Civic Center. The Pack forced overtime with a goal just prior to the halfway point of the third, and then sent the crowd into ecstasy with a goal by Terry Virtue (a former Bruin), which deflected off of ex-Wolf Pack Peter Ferraro, the first playoff overtime tally in the history of the franchise.

After that emotional high, the Wolf Pack had to come back down to earth for the Calder Cup Finals, and their opponent was a Rochester Americans team that was second only to the Wolf Pack in regular season points, with 104. The Pack’s momentum was not to be stopped at that point, though. The teams split the first four games, but Hartford took control with a 3-0 victory at home in Game Five, and then blitzed the Amerks with three first-period goals in Game Six. By the time the final buzzer sounded at the Blue Cross Arena in Rochester, the Pack had won comfortably by a score of 4-1 and had brought Hartford its first-ever pro sports championship.