As I am sure many of you have read, the sale of the Atlanta Thrashers to True North Sports and Entertainment was completed earlier today and the franchise has officially been relocated to Winnipeg. The city of Winnipeg once held a hockey team 15 years ago when the Winnipeg Jets called north of the border their home, but after they were unable to stabilize the franchise there, it was sold and moved.
Opinions on today's announced relocation are mixed. Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal, for example, blames the Thrashers' failure in Atlanta on the league itself and commissioner Gary Bettman...
This is how it ends: With the weasel of a commissioner not stepping foot in the city, with another season passing without a playoff game, with a lying ownership group maintaining it did all it could to save a franchise that in reality it spent most of seven years wrecking.
....This isn’t about the fans or the market or certainly Gary Bettman’s fictional “covenant” with fans, which I believe he left in the same sock drawer with his conscience. It’s about greed and abandonment, plain and simple. It’s about a disingenuous ownership group, which had long lost any semblance of credibility, serving up fans swill and gruel and then wondering why the turnstiles sleep at night.
They’ll tell you they care. They don’t. They’re walking away with a fat check. While you mourn the loss of a franchise, they’re waving goodbye with one middle finger.
Others like Scott Burnside of ESPN feel that Winnipeg may not be much better of an option than Atlanta already was...
For all the flag-waving that the impending move of the Thrashers to Winnipeg has generated throughout Canada (or at least in much of the Canadian media), Winnipeg is a small outpost city in an unforgiving prairie. Players will not flock to play there. That is the reality.
Think Edmonton has it tough? That city has hosted five Stanley Cup parades, yet players stay away in droves. They will stay away in droves from Winnipeg, too, no matter how much the city embraces this team.
I think both opinions make sense (some obviously stronger than others), but I don't believe that the success, or lack thereof, of this move can be determined until a few years from now when/if Winnipeg can prove that they are more capable of housing an NHL franchise than Atlanta was.
True North is well aware of this and has already started a campaign to purchase season ticket packages. Notice the high prices.
Also interesting, apparently the Thrashers were still allowing fans to purchase season tickets at Phillips Arena just an hour prior to the announcement that they were moving. So maybe ownership there was majorly corrupt after all?
The team name for the new franchise in Winnipeg has yet to be determined.
