National Post

CANADA’S LAST, BEST HOPE FOR THE CUP

What’s not to love about the Winnipeg Jets story?

- Andrew Coyne

The Return of Martin Guerre was a 1982 film starring Nathalie Baye and Gérard Depardieu. It is the story of a man who leaves his wife and village in 16th-century France to fight in a war. He returns years later and is embraced by both wife and village, who had given him up for dead.

Only it is not him. Another man has taken his place. His wife takes him in anyway, even testifying in court that the impostor is her husband. At some level she may even believe it.

This is basically the story of the Winnipeg Jets.

When the Jets left Winnipeg in 1996, the city nearly had a nervous breakdown. A previous threat to sell the team and move it to Minneapoli­s had been staved off by a last-minute publicpriv­ate initiative, the official face of an enormous public outpouring of emotion. In just five days, a local radio station raised more than $13 million from teary fans in support of the bid. Children pledged their allowances. Prisoners at the local penitentia­ry reportedly did a whip-round.

But it was not to be. The team left at the end of the next season, to more emotional scenes.

On the surface this was odd. Leaving is what Winnipegge­rs do. Some, like my brother and my dad, return but, for the rest the city’s response is generally more shrug than weep, born of its trademark mix of selfdeprec­ation and hardy selfconfid­ence. “Hey, congrats. Not to worry. There’ll be another along to take your place.” As indeed there always is.

So, surely, the same should have applied to the Jets. We were a city for a hundred years, some said, before we ever had a profession­al hockey team. We’ll be a city again when they’re gone.

But this missed the point. It’s one thing never to have had something you love. It’s quite another to have it, and then have it taken away. And it’s another thing again to get it back. If you want to know why Winnipeg fans so cherish this team — why this already magical playoff run has the whole city walking about in a happy daze — consider the emotions you would feel seeing a loved one come back from the dead.

Only it wasn’t the Jets. Not really. The team that left in 1996 went to Phoenix, to become the Phoenix (now Arizona) Coyotes. The team that came to Winnipeg, in 2011, was not the Coyotes but the Atlanta Thrashers. So, quite logically, the team’s new owners, the buttoneddo­wn True North Sports and Entertainm­ent group, thought to call the team something else: the Falcons, maybe, or the Warriors, or even the Manitoba Moose, like the city’s American Hockey League franchise.

The fans were having none of it. They knew exactly who this team was: It was the Jets, damn it, come back to them after 15 long years. Sensing a rebellion, the owners prudently buckled. Love is not to be reasoned with.

There was some history here, after all. In their first incarnatio­n, as a member of the World Hockey Associatio­n, the Jets had not only been wildly successful — winners of three Avco World Trophies! — but had done so playing the game the way it was meant to be played. They were among the first to draft European players, whose speed and skill put the Canadian game to shame. Bobby Hull, their million-dollar megastar and member, along with Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson, of one of the greatest lines in hockey history, had sat out a game in protest of the thuggery then disfigurin­g the sport. To my 14-year-old moralist self, the Jets were not just a team, but a cause.

Even after the WHA collapsed, and the Jets, stripped of their best players, entered the NHL, there was still much to be proud of. They fielded some decent teams in the mid-1980s, led by the incomparab­le Dale Hawerchuk, only to run into their old WHA stablemate­s, the Gretzky-era Edmonton Oilers, every year in the playoffs. Even in later years, when wins were few, the brilliant Teemu Selanne gave fans reasons to cheer.

Still, it’s been a long time since the city had not just a team, but a winner. That first-round victory over the Minnesota Wild was the first by a team called the Jets in more than 30 years. Having dispatched the powerful Nashville Predators in the second round, the Jets have now gone further into the playoffs than at any time in their NHL history.

In the first years since the “return,” fans cheered the team’s every move just on principle — they even cheer the owners, shouting rather than singing the words “True North” in the anthem.

Now they can cheer for a Stanley Cup contender. And so can you. Let me put it this way: why the hell wouldn’t you?

The Jets are not just the last Canadian team left in the playoffs. Should they defeat the Vegas Golden Knights (could there be a city more opposite, in every conceivabl­e way, to Winnipeg?) they would be the first Canadian team to reach the finals in seven years. And should — well I don’t even dare speak of it, but let’s just say it hasn’t happened since 1993.

Or leave nationalis­m out of it. Who doesn’t love an underdog? Of all NHL cities, Winnipeg is by far the smallest in population. It has the smallest arena, the 15,294-seat Bell MTS Place (some junior teams play in larger rinks). It has one of the smallest payrolls, the five highest-salaried players in the league make very nearly as much, combined, as the Jets’ entire roster.

In short, the Jets are the Green Bay Packers of the NHL. What’s not to love?

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 ?? JOHN WOODS / THE CANADIAN PRESS ?? Winnipeg Jets fans cheer after their team defeated the Nashville Predators to advance to the Stanley Cup semifinals.
JOHN WOODS / THE CANADIAN PRESS Winnipeg Jets fans cheer after their team defeated the Nashville Predators to advance to the Stanley Cup semifinals.
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