[…] While the NHL owns the Jets name and is willing to give it to Chipman, the chair of True North, Daly points out the team’s competitive history, including team and individual records, belongs to the Phoenix Coyotes. “One of his concerns about the Jets’ name and identity is that he really doesn’t own his history,” Daly explained. “The Phoenix Coyotes, if you look in their year book … their franchise records are all players who played for the Jets. And they’ll continue to have that. They maintained those rights when they relocated from market to market. He hasn’t indicated that pushes him away in any material way, that’s just a point of fact.”
I had been thinking the same thing, though not in terms of records. Daly is absolutely correct. The Jets are the Coyotes as much as the Gretzky Kings are the Palffy Kings are the Kopitar Kings. What I had been thinking about was draft history and trades, and how you can trace the lineage of players over time, for example how Jimmy Carson in the 80s leads to Dustin Penner in 2011.
(Jimmy Carson, traded for Gretzky, McSorley, etc.; McSorley traded to New York for Norstrom; Norstrom traded to Dallas for a bunch of stuff including a 1st round pick; that pick dealt with in a package with another 1st in a flurry of trades that landed the Kings the 13th overall pick, with which Teubert was drafted; Teubert traded for Penner. Voila.)
The team is the continuity of personnel going back to the beginning of the franchise. The Thrashers are an expansion team that’s moving to a different town. You can’t even make historical sense of the team without knowing that they were the Thrashers. They were not the Jets and have no relationship to the Jets.
I like the name Manitoba Moose. Is it available?