Bettman Giveth and He Hath Taken Away

The NHL's return to Winnipeg is proof that nothing's permanent in pro sports.

The NHL has returned to Winnipeg, and for now, all is right in Manitoba. For the city, it's comeuppance for having lost one of its most prized possessions in 1996, but the Winnipeg Free Press stresses the team's future is far from solidified. “We're back where we always felt we belonged and most Manitobans are pretty damn happy about it,” the editorialists write. Filling the MTS Centre every night – and reaching the franchise's goal of 13,000 season tickets sold – means “the future of Winnipeg's NHL hockey team rests exactly where it should – on the shoulders of Winnipeg's hockey fans.” After all, if passion was all it took to finance a hockey team, there'd be franchises everywhere from St. John's to Moose Jaw.

While relocation is certainly a cause for celebration, Bruce Arthur of the National Post reminds us that this is a business move in an organization that cares primarily about its bottom line. “In 1996, the NHL's business model outstripped Winnipeg's ability to pay for it. Now the reverse has happened with a team that was created a year after the Jets left town,” says Arthur. Winnipeg has grown in the intervening years, both in population and affluence. But it's still the smallest city in the NHL, and should the dollar take a tumble, or fans can't afford tickets, Winnipeg could follow Atlanta as the second city to have two NHL teams leave for greener pastures.

And let us not forget those in Georgia who are now suddenly without a hockey team. Jeff Schultz, the Thrashers' beat writer for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, spares no one involved in the deal. “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,” he seethes. “While you mourn the loss of a franchise, they’re waving goodbye with one middle finger.” It's a warning for other perennially awful teams, such as the Florida Panthers and Columbus Blue Jackets, whose futures are as uncertain as the Thrashers' were a year ago.