A month ago, I attended an event and may or may not have spoken with some Orlando Magic higher-ups who may or may not have informed me that before moving to Winnipeg, the Atlanta Thrashers were offered to Orlando. Certain one-percenters declined, though, and Winnipeg sort of got its Jets back. The reason I tell that worthless story is that Winnipeg fans should really hate the city of Orlando right now.

Saturday night, as the Jets laid a 5-3 hurting on the Carolina Hurricanes, pint-sized Tegan and Sara lookalike contest winner pop star Justin Bieber was spitting mad game at his special boo, Selena Gomez. But the real to-do involves their personalized Jets jerseys above and their subtle number choices. The fan site, JustinBieberZone.com, asks the hard-hitting question:

We kinda wonder, is that their lucky number or something? Dirty mind please go away!

I assume it’s because “SCISSOR” isn’t a number. But I don’t want to be too hard on the Biebz or his fans, especially since they’re insane, so I’ll just tell them to come back and visit when they try to understand Bieber’s 420 Toronto Blue Jays jersey.

Speaking of Bieber fans, I can’t bring them up without getting a sample of their thoughts on the suggestive jerseys…

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A “major Canadian concert act” is scheduled to perform at next month’s NHL FaceOff in Winnipeg. Who could it be? The Barenaked Ladies? (The Barenaked Ladies are triple platinum. Are you?) Maybe Sarah McLachlan will show up with an eight-minute ballad about “shelter” and a crate full of one-eyed kittens. Whatever they come up with, it couldn’t be worse than the NFL bringing in Kid Rock, Maroon 5 and Lady Antebellum to christen the new NFL season, right? Right?

Before you assume the people in charge of professional sports don’t want us to kill ourselves, consider that the band could be Nickelback.

Thankfully, the people of Winnipeg (and all good people in this world) are fighting back — by way of Deadspin (+1) comes an open letter published a few days ago in the Winnipeg Free Press urging the NHL to not ruin the Jets’ return to Winnipeg with a concerto from Chad Kroeger And His Stooges.

As people who love music and love Winnipeg even more, we have a request: Please ensure this does not happen. The return of the NHL to Winnipeg is something we have been dreaming about for 15 years. Please do not sully the celebration with the presence of a band whose existence is antithetical to the very concept of celebration.

Please, Person In Charge Of Booking This Event, do not bring Nickelback to Winnipeg that weekend. They can play the arena to their own fans — of which there are many — any time. But a free public performance? That would be tantamount to spitting on Bobby Hull’s toupee, burning Dale Hawerchuk’s jersey, leaving something wet on Thomas Steen’s city council seat or tripping Teemu Selanne on the ice during his final season in the NHL.

Strong words, but strong words are necessary to preserve the morale of a sport going through three player suicides since May. You may want to type, “come on, Nickeback isn’t that bad, they’re just a rock band, if you don’t like them you don’t have to listen”. Want to know why professional wrestling has such a problem with premature deaths? It probably has something to do with this:

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It looks like the Winnipeg Jets are cleared for landing.

Oh ho, I see what you did there, TSN.

The team, which is expected to officially announce their name before making the 7th overall pick in tonight’s NHL Entry Draft, is reportedly going to go with the very popular Jets nickname. You can watch the Draft live on TSN at 7pm et/4pm pt.

“Et” is French (possibly French-Canadian) for “and”, so you can watch the draft live at both 7 and 4 PM. I think “pt.” means pint. Actually, PM might stand for Prime Minister. I don’t know how hockey announcements work.

But here we are, watching the Atlanta Thrashers officially become the Winnipeg Jets, and watching the Winnipeg Jets officially become the NHL’s Cleveland Browns. I feel like public outcry backed Winnipeg into a corner, and they couldn’t announce their team was going to be called the “Klondikes” or some sort of bird without having tomatoes thrown at them. The original title of this post was going to be “PEER PRESSURE WORKS”, because hey, I wouldn’t have ever started drinking without it.

It’s official: the Atlanta Thrashers are moving to Winnipeg.

True North Sports and Entertainment, the Canadian group that has been negotiating to buy the team since mid-May, made formal announcement of the move at news conference in Winnipeg at 12:20 p.m.

“Sometimes, we simply don’t have a choice,” [Commissioner Gary Bettman] said.

The Thrashers owners, Atlanta Spirit, negotiated the sale of the Thrashers to True North since mid-May. The Thrashers’ owners have said in court documents that the team has lost $130 million since 2005.

Sh**, and I just learned what a “Thrasher” was. Fun fact: Atlanta is the only U.S. city to lose a sports franchise to Canada, and they’ve done it twice. The first time was when the Flames left for Calgary in 1980. The Thrashers have been in Atlanta since the league expanded in 1999, and spent most of their time adding black players to the team to try and and get hockey over in urban Georgia. Steven Godfrey of SB Nation has a great retrospective on that little storyline coming to an end, and hopefully they’ll continue to put together the team with a racial bias and make their mascot a big affable flag-waving white guy.

No word yet on whether or not the move will rebrand the team the “Jets,” the franchise that left Winnipeg for Phoenix to become the Coyotes in 1996, but anything else would seem anticlimactic. Think of Cleveland getting their football team back and calling them the “RiverDogs” instead of the Browns.

[via AJC]

As a fan of Washington franchises, I’ve been lucky in that I’ve never had to worry about my teams relocating. I can’t really imagine what fans of Hartford, Seattle, or Cleveland felt when their team was forced to move because of difficulties with ownership. Winnipeg knows their pain all too well, but finding closure has been harder for some Jets fans than others. They’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, one fan going so far as to call Winnipeg’s finest for backup.

Well, for one individual, the frustration finally boiled over. This particular soul, a 32-year-old resident of nearby Lundar, Manitoba, reached the point of no return and realized he was mad as hell and he wasn’t going to take it anymore. As any sane person would do when facing a similar issue, he called 911 to air his grievances regarding the Jets leaving town in 1996 and demanded that RCMP officers do anything in their power to get the Jets to move back to Winnipeg. He has been charged with “public mischief, false messages, harassing phone calls and obstructing justice.” –Sportress of Blogitude via Sports Illustrated

You can’t call the man to help you with a revolution. You have to start drinking heavily, flipping stuff over, and lighting things on fire, not calling the police. It’s like these fans have never rioted before. Probably because they’ve never won anything. They should call Philadelphia for rioting lessons. But, don’t give up hope on this story yet, it’s just getting started. Read the rest of this entry »