Winnipeg wins a hockey team. But do fans want the Jets back?
The Boston Bruins and Vancouver Canucks may be the ones battling it out for the Stanley Cup this week, but Winnipeg is stealing the spotlight. The city’s legions of hoser hockey fans are celebrating after the Atlanta Thrashers announced they will be headed for the Great White North.
So what will they be called? From Thrashers and Beavers to Moose and Falcons, suggestions for a new team name are coming from all corners in a city eager to hit the ice again, and all Canadian creatures are up for consideration. But the favorite is a familiar one to hockey fans, an old friend that parted ways with the city nearly two decades ago: The Winnipeg Jets.
As part of the now-defunct World Hockey Association and later the National Hockey League (NHL), the Winnipeg Jets were Manitoba’s pride and joy from the early ’70s. That is until the franchise jet-setted off to Phoenix, land of Coyotes, cacti and playoff series losses. Like a spurned lover, the lonely Canadian province was left out in the cold.
That was 15 years ago. Now, surprisingly, fans seem to be over the sting of the team’s departure and want the name back. For Winnepagans, it’s forgive and forget and play hockey — polls show fans overwhelmingly want the team to be the Jets. And if they can’t have that it should be “Other.”
Maybe it’s just the bitter, jaded sports fan in me, but if it had been up to me, “Jets” would no longer be an acceptable part of the Canadian vocabulary. News stations would be prohibited from covering New York football, and Peter, Paul and Mary songs would be banned from jukeboxes. Yes, that was a ‘Leaving On a Jet Plane’ reference.
As any heartbroken fool can tell you, a lost love leaves you not just with a bruised ego, but also with the defensiveness that the same thing will happen when the next person comes along — especially when they left you for warmer, unappreciative American money. So you’d think Winnipeg would be a little wary of revisiting that hurt with the Jets.
Of course, the whole debate might not even matter. Winnipeg mayor Sam Katz says the Jets name probably won’t happen because the team’s new owners, True North, will most likely want to use the name of their American Hockey League team, the Manitoba Moose.
This name has it’s problems, too. While I hear moose are infamous for their bad tempers and amazing grass-chewing abilities, I find myself unimpressed with the image of one trying to look fierce on the side of a goalie mask. How exactly do you make Bullwinkle look like he can tear you a new one?
Even worse though is the idea of having another sports team with no plural. The word is already phonetically silly enough, and it only gets trickier when sportscasters are forced to describe one moose passing to another moose and scoring for the rest of the moose.
To tell you the truth, I’m still hoping Winnipeg will go for something different. Something that either makes local sense or has a bit of dry Canadian humor. Some fans want the Threshers, a nod to both the Atlanta name and the prairie city’s agricultural history. I’m leaning more toward something like the Manitoba Ehs?, which by my account would be the first professional sports team with a question mark in its name.
Otherwise, there’s always something for fans of sitcoms: the WinniPeg Bundys.
