Which is my way of saying, (a) check out the new Jets blog, and (b) I forget what b was going to be.
Who owns the Jets’ history? – Arctic Ice Hockey
My two cents, unsolicited…
First of all, the history of the team travels with it if it’s relocated. It’s not just the retired numbers and the records (e.g. Selanne’s records are franchise records in Winnipeg I mean Phoenix, not in Atlanta I mean Winnipeg). This is just my opinion and my own possibly nerdy way of looking at things, but I frequently think about my team (which is the Kings) in terms of its family tree, which to me is the lineage of draft picks and trades down the years. As I mentioned on the Kings site, I like tracking Jimmy Carson from Kings draft pick through the Gretzky trade down through the picks that changed hands finally popping out the other side with Colten Teubert who is flipped for Penner (for instance). Even with changing ownership, which someone mentioned, you can still look at who bought the team from whom and under what circumstances.
For me, to think of the new Winnipeg Jets as being the same team with the old history of the old Winnipeg Jets is essentially to say that the defining characteristic of the franchise is geography, whoever plays here is OUR team. I think that’s covered pretty clearly with the word “Winnipeg.” The “Jets” part is… well, let me change my thought mid-stream.
If the Kings moved to KC, I would stay a Kings fan, and I would follow the Kings in KC, as I’m sure many original Jets fans did when the team moved to Phoenix. Now, if in 2030 Grandpa Bettman decided to move the Phoenix Coyotes to Los Angeles, I would be pretty pissed off if everyone wanted to call them the Kings. I agree it would be weird to go to a (new) Kings game and see Bobby Hull’s number hanging from the rafters. (and this is where I can understand Winnipeg fans desire to just pretend like the whole sordid affair just never happened.)
My question: aren’t there original Jets fans who still follow the Coyotes and who think it’s weird and wrong for the Thrashers to be the Jets now? Or is everyone basically on board with “our team is back, they would be all different players by now anyway, let’s just roll with it”?
I have actually in the course of this post talked myself half-way out of my own point-of-view!
Quisp on Jul 3, 2011 2:21 PM PDT