Oh Happy Days!

It's official. Winnipeg is back in the NHL. Pending an approval vote by the other owners, Winnipeg's True North Sports and Entertainment has purchased the Atlanta Thrashers and will move the team to the Manitoba capital for the 2011-2012 season. I can't really believe I am able to type these words because just like that, after 15 years of heartbreak and torment watching other Canadian cities, or worse, southern American cities that don't know the game, are not passionate about it and couldn't care less are given franchises that are destined to fail; playing at the start of every October and enjoying a playoff run forLord Stanley's Grail if they're lucky.



I do feel for the hockey fans in Atlanta. This is exactly what happened to my Jets in 1996. There was no owner to step up and absorb the losses and to have a new arena built. Without deep pockets and a state-of-the-art arena, you simply can't survive in today's NHL. Let's hope upon hope that the new owners in Winnipeg can be different, better. That's not a shot at former owner, Barry Shenkrow; he did everything he could and then some. He had warned the city for years that a new arena would be needed to be feasible and competitive in the NHL, but no one listened until it was much too late. This is the second time Atlanta has lost a team. In 1980, the Atlanta Flames headed north to Calgary and went on great success, becoming one of the power-house franchises in the 1980s and won the Stanley Cup in 1989. Even this current Atlanta/Winnipeg team has a promising future with a good nucleus of young, talented players such as Evander Kane, Andrew Ladd and Rob Schremp. More than a few of these players are excited about the future of playing in front of an actual audience, despite what you've heard in the media about their concern for the weather. As lame as an excuse that is.

Unless you're from places like Atlanta or Quebec City, you can't possibly fathom what it's like to lose your team. The old Jets franchise (or team, to be exact) really was the heart and soul of Winnipeg. You can tell that by all the Jets jerseys you see being worn today...and yesterday and the day before that and the week before that and the years before that. They never went away in the mind of Jets fans world-wide. And I do mean that...world-wide.

Even fans of other Canadian teams in other cities wanted a team back in Winnipeg.
Nathan Jacobson, a Winnipeg-born businessman who now lives in Israel, the announcement brought back warm memories of the city’s past – the entry into the old World Hockey Association, the signing of Bobby Hull to the sport’s first million-dollar contract, the team’s entry to the NHL and its rivalry with Wayne Gretzky’s Edmonton Oilers. He received e-mails from around the world yesterday from former Winnipeggers excited about the team’s return."

"He recalls doing business in Russia where people may have known little about Canada but they knew the Winnipeg Jets."

Either way the thousands of ex-Winnipeggers who still consider the city home once again have a team they can call their own.

“You never leave it. You never do.”

And that's what it is to be a Jets fan.

WOO HOO! Go Jets go!

P.S.

I told you so.