Return to Winnipeg Is a Mark of Shame for the NHL

While it would be good to see Winnipeg get its team back again, for the NHL, the return of the Jets at the expense of Atlanta is a serious blow, especially to its goal of being seen as a "big four" professional sport in the United States.

It would have been better if Winnipeg (and other hockey hungry markets Hamilton, Quebec and Hartford) had been granted an expansion franchise instead of a relocated one.

This will be the second time Atlanta will lose an NHL team, with both going to Canadian cities. The Calgary Flames also fled to the great white north after their woes in Atlanta.

For the NHL, this franchise shift can only be a mark of shame, especially for Commissioner Gary Bettman who helped father this franchise (and many other ones in unfamiliar hockey markets), to win recognition (and an expensive American television contract) that the NHL deserved the same status in the United States as MLB, the NBA and the NFL.

It is an open admission that his long term strategy was wrong and that hockey is still considered an inferior sport by most Americans.

More specifically, the shift can be blamed on two sources:  No one has been able to successfully operate a team in Atlanta and wants to try again; and the whining of Detroit Red Wings owner, Mike Ilitch.

Ilitch is responsible for the Thrashers being specifically moved to Winnipeg, the worst of the four choices listed above.

For years he has wanted to shift the Red Wings to the Eastern Conference, where the team can play more games in a better time zone and renew Detroit's traditional rivalries with Toronto and Montreal. 

So Winnipeg, and not one the Eastern choices, was selected to allow the Red Wings to move.  Columbus is reputably in the same boat.

Hilariously, while there will be time to approve the sale of the Thrashers and then a franchise shift to Winnipeg, there will be no time to accommodate Ilitch this season, so the Jets will be forced to be bitter divisional rivals with the Washington Capitals, Florida Panthers, Carolina Hurricanes and Tampa Bay Lightning for one season.  All four teams should love the extra flight times to Winnipeg.

In gratitude, Winnipeg should grant Ilitch his own private box in their arena for life.

More shamefully for the NHL, no one wants to buy and operate a team in Atlanta.

The NHL agreed to Winnipeg instead of the more humiliating course of contracting the Thrashers.

That no one in the United States wants to own the Thrashers (and possibly the Coyotes) shows hockey's status in the United States. Let's probe deeper into the NHL's humiliation.

1.  They are being forced to leave the eighth largest television market in the United States, 2.4 million, which is twice as many as there are people in all of Manitoba.

2.  They are being forced to accept the smallest NHL arena, 15,000. The last remaining NHL markets with arenas under 17,000, Edmonton and Long Island, are already coming close to building new adequate facilities. That means that the Jets will be playing in an arena that is over 2,000 seats smaller than the smallest current NHL arena.

3.  To put the above statistic into further perspective, the Nashville Predators averaged 16,142 fans this year and finished 21st in league attendance. Where will the Jets finish, especially if they don't sell out every game?

4.  The shift in franchise means that Bettman's long term strategy of making hockey a "national sport" in the United States by placing franchises in markets that were unfamiliar with hockey is failing. There are also serious problems in Florida, Columbus, Phoenix and Dallas.

5.  A better Western choice would have been to return to Kansas City, which built an 18,500 seat arena to house an NHL team and has a natural rivalry with St. Louis. But an NHL exhibition game with the New York Islanders filled less than 50 percent of the seats. That's been enough to scare off the NHL and any potential owner. So much for hockey being an attraction in the American mid-west.

6.  The NHL chose Winnipeg to please Ilitch.  But the three Eastern cities were better choices. All have bigger markets, and (if Hartford got around to making a commitment to building a new arena), all have or will have proper NHL size arenas.

7.  Quebec is better than Winnipeg because there is a firm commitment to build an NHL size arena of 18,500 within four years. The most sensible choice, Hamilton, which already has a great arena of over 17,000 and was willing to upgrade it to 18,500, is being shunned to preserve the monopoly of the southern Ontario market for Toronto and Buffalo.

8.  Winnipeg is also the worst choice in terms of rivalries. While they will have some great rivalry with Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and possibly Minnesota, it doesn't compare with Quebec-Montreal, Hamilton-Toronto-Buffalo and Hartford-Boston.

9.  There will a domino franchise realignment in in the NHL when Detroit moves East and Winnipeg moves West. Winnipeg will likely bump Colorado which will in turn bump Dallas. Detroit will bump Boston which will bump either Pittsburgh or Philadelphia.

10.  The NHL will become the first "major" league to not have a Detroit-Chicago divisional/conference rivalry.

Of course Bettman made his politic tour of Winnipeg, Quebec and Hartford last year, to cover things up and limit damage control, claiming that such previous franchise shifts "should never have happened," and that Winnipeg's too-small arena was NHL-worthy.

But strip off all the trimmings, the joy in Winnipeg and most of Canada, the shift of the Thrashers to Winnipeg will be a dark and shameful day for the NHL. It will be a long time before they will ever consider returning to Atlanta again.

Ironically, even more than the shifts of Quebec, Winnipeg and Hartford, Bettman can weep, "it should never have happened."