There are times, far fewer than we might like, perhaps, but there are times when everything seems to go just right.
The return of the National Hockey League to Winnipeg is one of those moments, although it hardly started out like that.
The disappointment at losing the bid earlier by Manitoba Moose owners Mark Chipman and David Thomson to buy the Phoenix Coyotes was bitter and tangible among the province’s fans, but the Atlanta Thrashers then seemed to fall like a gift from heaven on a city hungry for hockey.
And finally, when Chipman stood up at the recent NHL draft and introduced general manager Kevin Cheveledayoff to announce the draft pick “on behalf of the Winnipeg Jets,” there seemed to be hockey heaven right here in Winnipeg.
More than 4,000 who had paid to watch the draft on television at the MTS Centre, the home of the new Jets, erupted in joy. They had their NHL team back and they had its name as well.
Until Chipman spoke those words, no one outside his inner circle had any certain knowledge of what the team would be named, although the city was rife with rumours that, despite what many, perhaps even most, fans wanted, it would be anything but the Jets. The long delay in fixing on a final name fuelled those fears.
On Friday night, Chipman showed the city that he is not just a successful Winnipeg businessman, but that he is a true Winnipegger as well, someone with a sense of the city’s history and identity and, perhaps most importantly, its people.
There was no question that the team would be welcome here no matter what it was called — 13,000 pre-sold season tickets for a hockey team with no name and a sketchy history in Atlanta pretty well proved that — but the frenzy Friday at the MTS Centre and the gossip and good-feelings across Winnipeg on the weekend was a kind of fairy-tale ending to a dream that Winnipeggers have hung on to for 15 years, that the Jets would come back.
This is not a dream that comes free. Chipman and Thomson have put up a lot of money for it, and the fans are paying considerable sums for season tickets to watch a team that may, realistically, take some time to establish itself.
It is a tacit acknowledgment by everyone involved that the NHL franchise may belong to the owners, but the team, if it’s going to stay, must belong to the fans. Go, Jets, go!
— An editorial from the Winnipeg Free Press.