Jets are tied for last place in Southeast Division When the Winnipeg Jets traded their home on the Canadian prairie for the desert of Arizona 16 years ago, it appeared the NHL had abandoned that market for good.
The economics of the game — a dated arena (15,393), the league’s smallest television market, an unbalanced exchange rate between the United States and Canada and lack of a local ownership group willing to take on the team and its financial losses — doomed the Jets then. They moved to Phoenix after the 1995-96 season.
Life moved on. Winnipeg immediately acquired an American Hockey League franchise and in 2004 built a sparkling downtown arena thanks in part to a deep-pocketed ownership group with local ties. But even with all of those pluses on its ledger, a metropolitan population about equal to Akron, Ohio, (700,000) seemed a poor fit for another shot at an NHL team.
But when the splintered group that owned the NHL’s Atlanta Thrashers finally decided to sell that moribund franchise in the spring, True North Sports & Entertainment — the owner of both the arena and the AHL’s Manitoba Moose — moved quickly. And by May 31, the NHL was back in Winnipeg. On Thursday, the Capitals make their first trek there since Dec. 10, 1995, a 6-1 win at old Winnipeg Arena.
“Oh, it’s crazy,” Washington rookie forward Cody Eakin, a Winnipeg native, said about the reception the rechristened Jets have received in his hometown. “When it was announced, they shut down the downtown and had parades and had street hockey games going on Main Street there — festivals and concerts and all that.”
Indeed, by mid-June, this small, remote city — four hours north of Fargo, N.D.; 825 miles from Calgary, Alberta; and thousands of miles from Canada’s population centers — had reached its goal of 13,000 season-tickets sold and a waiting list of about 8,000.
Much like their old Jets, however, the fans haven’t exactly had a lot to cheer about so far. These are still the Thrashers, after all, who made the Stanley Cup playoffs once in their 12-year history. Playing in the Southeast Division for one more season until the league can realign its teams, the Jets are tied for last place at 6-9-3 with 15 points. Washington, coming off a stinging 3-1 loss at Nashville on Tuesday in which it allowed all three goals in the final five minutes, remains in first place at 10-5-1 and with 21 points.
“I think the thing that we’re all excited about is we haven’t had a chance to play there yet,” said Caps defenseman Karl Alzner, who was with the AHL’s Hershey Bears when that team played a Calder Cup final series in Winnipeg against the Manitoba Moose. “The fans haven’t really had a chance to see guys like [Alex Ovechkin] and [Nicklas Backstrom], really. So they’re going to be pretty fired up for it. And in turn it’s going to be pretty exciting for us to go on the ice.”
