The Plymouth Whalers are looking at Chatham as a potential new home.

Whalers owner Peter Karmanos told ESPN reporter Craig Custance on Monday that he’s targeting a small Canadian city for relocation.

“Hopefully, Chatham,” Karmanos said.

The Whalers have drawn poorly in Plymouth and Karmanos is already talking about their current home in the past tense.

“It was continually a battle to break even there, no matter how good we did as a team,” he said in a tweet from Custance.

The Whalers ranked 19th out of 20 teams in attendance last season in the Ontario Hockey League with an average crowd of 2,478, according to hockeyattendance.com. That was only 64.3% of capacity at Compuware Arena.

They’re annually near the bottom in attendance in the OHL.

Karmanos also owns Compuware Arena. Multiple sources reported last month that the USA Hockey Foundation has an agreement to acquire the arena by the first half of 2015.

USA Hockey wants to move its national team development program to the facility.

Flint, Mich., has also been mentioned as a possible new home for the Whalers. A major announcement is scheduled for Tuesday morning in Flint about the city’s hockey facilities.

It’s expected to be one of the biggest sports announcements there in recent years, according to Flint’s ABC television station. However, OHL Insiders tweeted Flint will be getting a team from the United States Hockey League, not the OHL.

OHL Insiders also reported Whalers personnel say the team is looking to stay within one hour of the Plymouth area. Chatham is approximately 90 minutes from Plymouth.

The OHL deadline to apply to relocate is Dec. 31.

The Whalers are in their 25th season. They’ve made the OHL playoffs for 23 consecutive years, but last season’s record of 28-33-0-7 was one of the worst in franchise history.

The Erie Otters were rumoured in the spring of 2013 to be headed to Chatham, but general manager Sherry Bassin denied the gossip. The Otters agreed earlier this year on a five-year arena lease that will keep them in Erie, Pa.

Chatham-Kent council discussed a potential property acquisition in regards to an OHL-sized arena in March 2014.

"This is a great hockey town and people are still looking at it," chief administrative officer Don Shropshire said at the time. "There’s nothing else to report … people are just looking."

A municipal report last year stated preliminary estimates to build a new arena ranged from $45 million to $50 million, with an anticipated annual operating deficit of $600,000, based on the experiences of other facilities.