Thrashers headed to Winnipeg

A team in Winnipeg should be called the Jets. And a team in Quebec City, should that happen, should be called the Aces. Tradition doesn't always move merchandise but it should be followed at least some of the time.

 

I have heard some rumblings that the team will have something to do with Polar Bears.

Manitoba is the Polar Bear watching capitol of the world as well as Winnipeg being a northern city, seems to make some sense.

 

Does Elliotte need to do some copy editing? Colangelo didn't buy the Jets in 1996.

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/stanleycup/story/2011/05/31/sp-nhl-returns-winnipeg.html

 

The Coyotes would be doing just fine if Colangelo bought them. It was Steven Gluckstern and Richard Burke who bought the team.

Wikipedia includes Colangelo as part of the group that bought the Coyotes, but I don't believe he ever was. I think he merely helped get them into America West Arena.

 

Yeah, but what about Les Panthères du Quebec?

 

They corrected it, but still wrong. Burke was from Minnesota and Gluckstern was from Long Island. Gluckstern left a short time later when he bought a piece of the Islanders.

PC is right on Colangelo. The team would be fine if he bought the team. The Coyotes were just tenants and didn't keep all the revenue from advertising and suites. That's why Burke sold the team to Steve Ellman. It didn't help the Burke had to borrow money to buy Gluckstern's share. Ellman had to borrow $60 million of the $87 million to buy the team in 2001. It's tough to cover losses when you can't afford a team in the first place.

 

I like the four division idea, but my divisions are a little different. I don't think Detroit wants to play Sid the Kid and Ovie four times a year as much as they just want to play fewer road games in the Pacific time zone (Wings had 15 games last season that started at 9 p.m. Eastern or later)

If your Western Conference looks like this:
Norris Division: DET, CHI, NSH, STL, WPG, MIN, DAL
Smythe Division: PHX, COL, SJ, VAN, EDM, CAL, LA, ANA

And the East like this:
Adams Division: TOR, MTL, OTT, BUF, NYR, NYI, NJ, BOS
Patrick Division: PIT, PHI, CAR, TB, WSH, FLA, CLB

Then, to pay off the Wings for keeping them in the West and the Blue Jackets (or Preds) for jumping to the East, you make their path to a playoff berth a little easier by re-instituting divisional playoff play (at least to a point - I'd make the top three in each division automatic qualifiers and the 7 and 8 seeds Wild Cards).

 

Hockey was one of the few things Colangelo was involved with directly in Phoenix. He was buying the Diamondbacks about the time the Coyotes moved to the desert. Part of the Coyotes' undoing early, though, may have been playing at the now-U.S. Airways Center. The sightlines were terrible for hockey, which led to the building of the arena in Glendale.

 

Couldn't see one goal from about 25% of the seats. The building was built for basketball and the upper deck extended out to the ice on one end. The rest of the arena was great, but that's kind of a significant flaw.

Of course, if it was Colangelo's team they would have reconfigured that end of the building. They had a design that would have done it. But the Coyotes were owned by assholes, so they weren't about to accommodate them.

 

4200 season tickets sold in 2 days.