The Danbury Hat Tricks are excited to announce the 3rd Annual Danbury Hockey Alumni Night on March 18th when the Hat Tricks host the Watertown Wolves.
Danbury has a rich professional hockey history, starting with the Danbury Trashers in the 2004-05 season and continuing through the years with the Mad Hatters, Whalers, Titans and Hat Tricks. Invitations are extended to players, front office and staff from each of those teams to join us for our Alumni Night and participate in the festivities.
As part of the night, Danbury will be wearing a jersey honoring the 2013 Commissioner’s Cup Champion Danbury Whalers. The jerseys will be auctioned off after the game.
On that night, the Hat Tricks will induct three members into the Danbury Hockey Ring of Honor. A banner featuring the names of the honorees will hang alongside the team banners and Corey Fulton’s (Whalers) retired number 15.
This season’s inductees are Ed Campbell of the Danbury Trashers and Danbury Whalers, Steve Brown of the Whalers, Titans, Hat Tricks, and Alan Friedman of the Whalers.
Ed Campbell played 15 seasons of professional hockey, with three of those spent in Danbury between the Trashers and Whalers. Campbell played 29 games for the 2005-06 Trashers, scoring 16 points and piling up 132 penalty minutes, fourth most on that edition of the Trashers. The Worcester, Massachusetts, native returned to the Whalers for the 2012-13 season, serving as the captain of the 12-13 team and guiding the Hat Tricks to the Commissioner’s Cup Championship as the top team in the Federal Hockey League. Campbell was also an 8th round pick of the New York Rangers in the 1993 NHL Entry Draft.
Steve Brown is the all-time leader in games played in Danbury’s proud hockey history. He arrived in Hat City during the 2012-13 season and across the next eight seasons, compiled 83 games played for the Whalers, 71 games played for the Titans, and 74 games played for the Hat Tricks, for a total of 228 regular season games played in a Danbury uniform. He added another 29 postseason games for an overall total of 257 games in Hat City, and was voted as one of the FPHL’s Defensemen of the Year in the 2021-22 season. The defenseman from Spring Lake, North Carolina, became a beloved fixture of the city and a bedrock of every team he ever played on, including the 2013 Commissioner’s Cup Champion Whalers. Brown has remained with the Hat Tricks as an assistant coach on Billy McCreary’s bench this season.
Alan Friedman served as the team President/CFO of the Danbury Whalers. Alan was part of the team’s ownership group and was a key figure in managing the daily operations of the Whalers, guiding them to Danbury’s first professional hockey championship in 2013.
These three join current Ring of Honor members Jim Galante, AJ Galante, Dave MacIssac, Nick Niedert, and Matt Caranci.
As part of the weekend, all Danbury hockey alumni will be invited to participate in an afternoon Alumni Game prior to the Hat Tricks game against Watertown. There will be a pre-game reception in the Axe Tricks Lounge and all alumni will be honored at the first intermission of the game. All alumni (players, management, staff, ownership, etc.) of the Danbury hockey family are invited to RSVP on the link here for the weekend.