It is fitting, in a way, that the final big sports conversation in Winnipeg in 2008 has something to do with the return of the Winnipeg Jets.
It’s not: Will new head coach Mike Kelly turn around the Blue Bombers? or Will Winnipegger Jonathan Toews get the Blackhawks back to a Stanley Cup for the first time in 47 years? or Will Winnipeg’s concussed Corey Koskie indeed try to play for Team Canada at the World Baseball Championship this spring?
Nope. It’s the middle of the hockey season and once again, Winnipeggers are talking about the Jets.
Whether they think it’s just crazy talk or a legitimate discussion doesn’t seem to matter. The apparent financial failure of the Phoenix Coyotes combined with the thought that an impending collapse in the desert might allow the ‘Peg to one day get another shot an NHL team, has citizens taking sides in the debate once again.
Interestingly, as the stories swirl about the Coyotes’ most recent flirtation with bankruptcy, the local political big wigs all seem to be on the same side. If somebody out there wants to move a team to Winnipeg or sell one to the local burghers, the politicos will do all they can to make it happen.
“You know that in the right situation, I’m on board,” said Mayor Sam Katz who, ironically, is spending the holiday season in Scottsdale, Ariz. “I know there are plenty of arguments against a team ever returning, but if it ever appeared as if one might, I believe the city would be on side.”
Considering that one of Katz’s strongest rivals, far-left city councilor Dan Vandal, once wrote a letter to the then-struggling Pittsburgh Penguins asking Mario Lemieux, the Pens president and CEO at the time, if Winnipeg might purchase the team, suggests that council would probably support the mayor.
Meanwhile, Premier Gary Doer, has never wavered in his support of the NHL’s return to Winnipeg. He’s one of the few people who believes that the 15,001-seat MTS Centre, a rink built for an AHL team, could easily support an NHL franchise.
In fact, Doer has always said, “If the Coyotes are losing all that money and they’d like to come back to where they started, Winnipeg and Manitoba would welcome them with open arms.”
And, one supposes, open wallets.
This latest round of “Can the Jets return?” started with the news last week, first published in the Arizona Republic, that the Coyotes will likely lose $30 million US this year and that the team’s owner, trucking magnate, Jerry Moyes, was facing financial problems with his core business, Swift Transport.
If the Coyotes do lose $30 million US this season, that will bring the total to almost $500 million US since the team left Winnipeg in 1996. People tend to forget that there have been three ownership groups in Phoenix and the original proprietors, the pair who took the team out of Winnipeg — Richard Burke and Steven Gluckstern — have been out of hockey for nearly a decade. The Coyotes have been a failure on and off the ice and reports from Larry Brooks in the New York Post last week suggested that the NHL has already started a financial bailout in the desert.
Why they’d want to save that mess is anyone’s guess, but the likely reason is that commissioner Gary Bettman’s long-held belief that hockey could work in non-traditional markets in the southern United States, must be protected at all costs.
In the meantime, Winnipeggers still hope and pray and talk. Maybe the downturn in the U.S. economy is the start of a return to sanity and maybe, one day, big league hockey will come back to the people who actually care about it.
Related posts:
- Is it time for the NHL to come back to Canada?
- Report: Canadian NHL Teams create 31 per cent of league’s ticket revenue.
- NHL free agency 2008: Perhaps this will end all the talk about Winnipeg and Quebec City. Of course, it might also ring the death knell for South Florida, Atlanta, Nashville and Phoenix.