Today is a great day for Winnipeg, Manitoba and Canadian hockey fans who feel that the more teams that exist north of the border, the better. It is not such a great day for the NHL. The sale of the Atlanta Thrashers to True North Sports and Entertainment represents the second time an NHL team has failed to survive in Atlanta and adds to a long list of defunct or relocated teams. The Thrashers will follow the Flames northward into Canada, with much fanfare and excitement. The NHL, I'm sure, is far more worried about this deal than True North or the city of Winnipeg. They are secretly praying that - unlike in Atlanta - history does not repeat itself.
First off, let's get one thing straight: Winnipeg is not a good hockey market. The relocation stems for the fact that Atlanta is a terrible market and Winnipeg currently stands as the only city with an NHL ready arena. The NHL accepts this relocation because there is no alternative; Winnipeg isn't the best option, it's the only one. Winnipeg is now the smallest city to have an NHL hockey team. It's metropolitan population of 700,000 is easily the lowest of any other city with a team and makes Winnipeg the only one with a population of less than 1 million.
The MTS Centre, which was so integral to the deal gaining approval, is not necessarily everything that the league could have hoped for. Though relatively new (constructed in 2004), the arena has a capacity of only 15,015 - another low mark in the league. This capacity trails second place Nassau Coliseum of the New York Islanders (which is hoped to soon be upgraded) by over 1,000 seats. In fact, this new arena is smaller than the old Winnipeg Arena, where the original Jets played their hockey. Of course, selling out 15,000 seats is better than selling just 13,000 of 17,000 seats, but there's no guarantee that sellouts will occur. Fans are eager for hockey now, after a 15 year drought, but how will sales look after years of (potentially) mediocre hockey? After all, the Thrashers organization had 12 years without even one playoff series victory. Who is to say that things will be so different in Winnipeg? It's not as if Winnipeg fans were swarming to games when the Jets struggled in the mid-90s. Their average attendance from 1989 to their relocation in 1996 was well below the league average.
Another fact working against Winnipeg is that it's a cold barren wasteland during the majority of the NHL season. Edmonton proved that it is hard for a small, cold Canadian market to attract big name players when Chris Pronger and Dany Heatley (two Canadians, no less) spurned the Oilers to play in California. Winnipeg has already seen a superstar denounce the city as an undesirable location to play. It is not yet possible to determine if the team could survive while languishing in the standings, as the Oilers have done for the past several years.
The Jets might not even go by the name Jets, even though that is by far the favoured name. True North has not named the team yet and is said to be considering other options, most likely in the hopes of distancing the new team from the one which failed on and off of the ice. Not to mention that a new name and logo opens the door for plenty of commercial opportunity to sell new jerseys and merchandise.
Still, the Jets, or Moose, or whatever they end up going by have a few things working in their favour. This is the new NHL after all, where the salary cap is meant to keep parity between large and small market teams. Also, Winnipeg will have no trouble icing an expensive (and thus hopefully, competitive) team with billionaire David Thomson (aka the richest man in Canada) running the show. The team Winnipeg adopts isn't too shabby either. The Thrashers had several promising young players and as a group are superior to any of the past relocated teams. However, the biggest improvement in conditions since 1996 is the exchange rate, which has since seen the Canadian dollar surpass the US. In a city where revenues are collected in CAD and player salaries are paid in USD, a weak exchange rate helped to doom the old Jets. A strong exchange rate (for the time being) provides the new Jets with much more financial stability.
Despite my overall skepticism, I am rooting for the Jets to succeed. No matter how the NHL runs as a business, I feel that the fans in Winnipeg are more deserving of a team than those in clearly uninterested parts of the US. I only hope that the enthusiasm demonstrated by Winnipeggers in the past few months is carried on through uncertain years.
Now let's make it 8.
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