The Carolina Hurricanes 'Whalers Night' Is Dividing The Room (Even Though The Jerseys Are Spectacular)

If you were going about your Thursday night as usual and suddenly had an insatiable urge to start humming the iconic "Brass Bonanza," that's because the Carolina Hurricanes were holding their annual Whalers Night; a night paying homage to the franchise's days in Hartford from the 1970s to the late-ish 1990s.

The idea is pretty simple: for one night, the Canes cosplay as the Whalers.

And while they didn't bust out Cooperalls this year, the Canes took warmups in their phenomenal Whalers throwbacks while rocking some WHA-era headbands ahead of their game against the Sabres.

Too bad goalies can't partake in the headband party… oh what's that? Freddie Anderson brought out some throwback brown pads for the occasion?

I don't know about you, but if I was at that game and they said, "Sorry guys, no game tonight; just a warmup skate" and made everyone go home, I wouldn't be happy about it, but I would feel like I had gotten my money's worth.

I mean, how can you top that? It's not like a couple of dudes would start trading haymakers off the opening puck drop.

Be still my heart…Nothing could ever top this. Nothing.

*Passes out on the floor*

…

…

…

…oh, man… I'm alright. What a night.

The Hurricanes won this one 5-2, which means that there was plenty of "Brass Bonanza" to go around.

You'd think there's no possible way people could have a problem with this, but it did open up kind of an interesting discussion about teams that moved to a different city wearing throwback jerseys of their former identity.

We've seen this pretty frequently with the Canes, but the Colorado Avalanche wore Quebec Nordiques throwbacks a couple of years ago as part of Adidas' Reverse Retro program, while the New Jersey Devils wore sweaters paying homage to their previous identity as the Colorado Rockies.

Some didn't like it at all.

The night even got the Hartford Yard Goats' goat.

This is a tough one. On one hand, I love seeing a team embrace its history… but I get why people might think it's a bit backward for the franchise to have ripped out the hearts of the OG New England/Hartford Whalers fans like that guy from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, only to say a couple of decades later, "Y'know what? That logo was pretty great; let's use it."

Let me know how you feel about teams like the Hurricanes doing things like this: mattreigleoutkick@gmail.com