ATLANTA FANS STILL FEELING THE STING OF LOSING THEIR INEPTLY-RUN FRANCHISE TO WINNIPEG

A T L A N T A • The playoff run by the Winnipeg Jets has ripped the bandages off some old wounds in their former home.

Hockey fans in Atlanta — yes, they actually exist — are still bitter about the way they lost the Thrashers seven years ago, a move that deprived this city of a team for the second time and probably any chance of ever again being a member of the NHL club.

In the aftermath of their existence, a popular refrain for this year’s post-season seems to be AB-T-J.

Anybody But The Jets.

“I won’t support the Jets,” former Thrashers fan Fred Johnson wrote in an email. “In fact, I’d like to see their fans suffer for a lot longer like we did.”

Instead of suffering, the Jets and their fans are thriving. Winnipeg reached the Western Conference final against the Vegas Golden Knights — a sort of doublewhammy for Atlantans, who have seen what their former team could have been while getting a tantalizing glimpse of what a well-run expansion franchise can do its very first season.

Founded in 1999, the Thrashers managed just 14 wins and 39 points in their debut year, which remains the worst full-schedule total in almost a quarter-century. The Golden Knights piled up 51 wins and 109 points, captured a division title and were just two wins away from playing for the Stanley Cup going into Game 4 of their series against the Jets on Friday night.

In contrast to the Golden Knights, the Thrashers never really had a chance in Atlanta, doomed by a bickering group of owners who spent more time suing each other than caring about what was happening on the ice, clueless management and inept coaching, and a roster perennially low on talent.

The lone highlight came in 2007, when the team captured the Southeast Division title and finally made the playoffs for the first (and only) time.

The euphoria didn’t last long. The Thrashers were swept in four straight games by the New York Rangers. Atlanta began the following season with six consecutive losses, leading to the firing of coach Bob Hartley, and the dismantling of the franchise commenced a few months later.

In what became an all-too-familiar scenario, the frugal Thrashers dealt away Marian Hossa rather than lose him as a free agent, one of many horrible deals engineered by general manager Don Waddell, who somehow kept his job throughout the Thrashers’ entire existence without ever really demonstrating that he knew what he was doing.

Anyone remember Angelo Esposito, a supposed top prospect who was acquired in the Hossa deal?

Anyone?

Bueller? Bueller?

The Thrashers always seemed to operate under a dark cloud, most tragically exhibited in 2003 when star player Dany Heatley lost control of his Ferrari on a narrow Atlanta street, struck a wall at high speed and killed teammate Dan Snyder. Heatley recovered but was never the same, eventually requesting a trade so he could get a fresh start elsewhere.

The Thrashers soon followed Heatley’s lead. In 2011, after a proposed move of the bankrupt Phoenix franchise to Winnipeg fell apart, the NHL quickly engineered a deal to send Atlanta’s team north in place of the Coyotes, collecting a hefty relocation fee and ridding themselves of another troublesome franchise.

While it’s impossible to deny the team has been more embraced by hockey-mad Winnipeg than it ever was in Atlanta, this city’s fans have long be dealt a bum rap that goes all the way back to its first NHL team.

Yes, the Flames lasted only eight years in Atlanta before moving to Calgary in 1980. But they averaged more than 10,000 fans every season (not a sure thing in those days) and outdrew the NBA’s Hawks every year but their last. That franchise was largely doomed by the economics of the late 1970s.

For the Thrashers, it was a similar story.

They averaged more than 17,000 in their debut season despite putting one of the worst teams in modern NHL history on the ice. But the franchise was essentially doomed when it was sold to a group known as Atlanta Spirit (what a malicious example of false advertising that was).

The new owners wanted only the Hawks and Phillips Arena. Almost immediately, they began trying to pawn off the Thrashers. Not surprisingly, no one was interested in acquiring a team that would have to rent an arena from an increasingly dysfunctional group.

Through all the turmoil, the Thrashers never ranked at the bottom of the NHL in attendance. In fact, the average from their gloomy final year would have beaten out three teams this season.

Many Thrashers fans are still upset about being ridiculed for a perceived lack of support after the team moved. And unlike the Flames, who retained their name and some sense of their Atlanta history after moving to Calgary (and were largely cheered by their former fans for winning the Stanley Cup in 1989), the Jets made a clean break with their past.

Johnson, the former Thrashers fan, recalls the vitriol when the move was announced. He said some Jets fans who trolled the Thrashers’ message boards belittled Thrashers fans as “worthless” and said the team would now win the Stanley Cup in Winnipeg because that’s where “real fans” were.

“They had no idea about the dysfunctional management,” he said.

For those who still love the game in Atlanta, they’ll have to make do with watching games on television and rooting for other teams.

Anybody but the Jets, that is.

Adonis Stevenson is too old and too inactive to be taken completely seriously as a boxing great anymore but he has revealed one deep secret to his success.

“I don’t do sex,” he said. He said it with a straight face. He didn’t go into details of when or for how long. A few steps away, his girlfriend, turning all shades of red, confirmed it to be true.

Just another story now for the Stevenson file of so many stories. How he came late to boxing after spending time in prison. How he emerged as one of the giant punchers in the game, against all odds. How he rarely fought outside of Quebec, and rarely fought anybody of consequence, protecting his record and his WBC light-heavyweight championship along the way. How he became a household name in Montreal but is anything but household in nine other Canadian provinces.

Stevenson should be known and recognized in Canada the way George Chuvalo is known and the way Lennox Lewis is known, but his promoters and management team has shut the country out, the national networks have chosen to ignore him and the fact his list of opponents is partly laughable hasn’t helped any kind of sell. Assuming they have tried to sell rather than protect.

So there is no sense that Stevenson will enter the ring Saturday night in Toronto in the toughest defence of his light-heavyweight title against Badou Jack as any kind of crowd favourite. This may, in fact, be a split kind of crowd at Air Canada Centre. Stevenson can wear a championship belt over his shoulder and a silly-looking crown on his head, which makes him look more clown than royalty, but with Floyd Mayweather involved as Jack’s promoter, the Toronto crowd mayendupproJack.

“Canada,” Stevenson said at the main fight press conference at The Rec Room, just down the road from the ACC, “my country. I love Canada.”

What we don’t know — and may not know until Saturday night — does Canada love him back?

Stevenson has been a monstrous puncher with maybe the best left hand in boxing, but here’s where you wonder: He turns 41 in September. He fought once in 2017, a second-round TKO of somebody named Andrzej Forfara. He fought once in 2016, a four-round knockout of somebody named Thomas Williams Jr. He fought once in the second half of 2015, a third-round stoppage against somebody named Tommy Karpency.