Atlanta Thrashers

[erynthered]

Not the way I see it, E. Rays were the best team no one saw last year. Lightning season ticket holders don't even go to home games w/ northern city opponents (too unruley for them...). Only games the Bucs, Jags & Fish come close to selling out are vs. northern teams w/ strong transplants in Fla.

 

Atlanta -like most southern cities it "jewels" over- is souless. No specific culture, music, food. Nothing. It's huge! -but boring. Most of their sports teams came via other cities and they slip out the same way. I also benefited by seeing a couple Sabres games in Hot-lanta but it was a non-humorous joke to have a hockey team there. Good riddance Flames/Thrashers!

 

Maybe I could have been clearer. Back in the early 80's going Buc's games it was more of the opponents fans in the stadium. That changed due to winning. 10 years top ten D, and a Super Bowl helped build a fan base with a waiting list of 5 years to get tickets.

 

When we were awarded teh Rays I bought Seasons tickets. It was laughable. Fan support was not what it is now, or has been the last few years with them winning 2 AL East titles and 1 WS trip. Granted, they still dont pull the amount of fans that they should, but its a far cry from when we got the team.

 

The Bolts were similiar to the Rays. Fan support when we got the team was not as good as its been for the last few years. Winning a Stanley Cup helped build a new generation of Hockey Fans down here. Again, granted it should be better, but its better than what is was.

Winning has helped all three of these professional sports teams.

 

Winning. Just like Charlie Sheen.

[paintmyhouse]

The thing that I'm surprised about is that I didn't really hear about this coming. All the talk was about the Coyotes bolting back to Winnipeg.

 

That link Cynical posted says it all, though. I can't even imagine this:

 

Atlanta's Sports Market, Explained In 50 Words Or Fewer

 

by Jason Kirk • May 30, 2011 3:47 PM EDT

 

Three of the five sports-related terms trending on Atlanta Twitter Monday afternoon referred to a Florida college football coach maybe becoming an Ohio college football coach.

 

One term not trending: Thrashers, the name of Atlanta's departing NHL team.

 

I bet it was weeks ago. This has been a foregone conclusion for over a month now. Just a matter of dotting the I's and crossing the T's. Really, this has been in discussion pretty strong 4-5 months now, it was a disruption for the team that was actually in the running for a playoff spot but did nothing to help the team and sputtered for much of the time when this discussion began. Many Thrashes fans have known for over a month the team was gone. I don't think it is fair to just sum up Atlanta's sports market that way. College football is most popular, but NFL is right there with it. There is a lot of hockey fans here. I guess we all lose.

[DrDawkinstein]

Not the way I see it, E. Rays were the best team no one saw last year. Lightning season ticket holders don't even go to home games w/ northern city opponents (too unruley for them...). Only games the Bucs, Jags & Fish come close to selling out are vs. northern teams w/ strong transplants in Fla.

 

Atlanta -like most southern cities it "jewels" over- is souless. No specific culture, music, food. Nothing. It's huge! -but boring. Most of their sports teams came via other cities and they slip out the same way. I also benefited by seeing a couple Sabres games in Hot-lanta but it was a non-humorous joke to have a hockey team there. Good riddance Flames/Thrashers!

 

This is inaccurate and just plain wrong. Maybe if you are referring to the suburbs that have sprawled out recently, like Alpharetta, Marietta, Norcross, etc. But to say "Atlanta has no soul" is just ridiculous. It's packed with history and culture, has one of the best music scenes for the past 50 years (still going strong), and some of the best restaurants from fine dining all the way down to good ol fashioned Southern Soul Food.

 

Not sure what part of Atlanta you saw, but it doesnt sound like you had a good tour guide. At all.

 

If you are ever coming back through, give me a shout and I'll point you in the right direction.

Edited June 1, 2011 by DrDareustein

[paintmyhouse]

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/news;_ylt=Ak7_afeo41cSOZEe1P2DtQE5nYcB?slug=nc-cotsonika-will_nhl_work_in_winnipeg_this_time053111

 

This is a pretty fair article written by Nicholas J. Cotsonika of Yahoo Sports. It talks a lot less about fans apathy towards hockey which is really much closer to the truth.

 

Enjoy this, Winnipeg. Soak it up and celebrate. Fifteen years after you lost an NHL team, after so many false starts and false hopes, you have another NHL team now. The highest level of hockey is coming home to the Canadian heartland.

Hockey fans in Winnipeg celebrated the news of the NHL's return. The challenge is to support the team at a level that will keep the club in town.

 

But make no mistake: This is not what the NHL wanted. This was a last resort. Just because the Atlanta Thrashers have been sold and will be relocated to Manitoba – pending the approval of the league’s board of governors on June 21 – does not mean the team will succeed or necessarily even stay for good.

 

Business took the Jets from Winnipeg and made them the Phoenix Coyotes in 1996. Business took the Thrashers from Atlanta and will make them whatever they will be called now. And business – not nationalism, not romanticism, not anything else – will determine where this team goes from here, and it faces plenty of challenges and uncertainties.

 

The NHL did not allow the Thrashers to be sold to a group intending to move them to Manitoba because the league wanted a seventh Canadian team. It did not do this dreaming of prairie kids playing pond hockey.

 

Canadians want to own the game. But the owners want to grow the game – and therefore grow their revenues and their profits. The league wanted the Thrashers to work in Atlanta, a large market with a large corporate base and a large affluent population, not to mention a large group of transplanted northerners who, in theory, could help transplant the sport.

 

But the Thrashers had bad ownership, bad management and a bad team for much of their brief tenure. They made the playoffs once in their 11 seasons and got swept. They parted with their best players – Dany Heatley(notes), Marian Hossa(notes), Ilya Kovalchuk(notes). They never gave the sport a chance to succeed, and attendance plummeted.

 

“I think people would go (to games in Atlanta),” said Ray Ferraro, a Canadian and 18-year NHL veteran, who played for the Thrashers from 1999-2002, their first three seasons. “It’s just, they’re not going to watch loss after loss after loss. They just aren’t – in any market, in any sport. OK. Let’s talk about Winnipeg. Say that team goes there and they have four playoff games in the next 10 years. You think the building’s going to be full?”

 

Ferraro isn’t saying that the NHL won’t work in Winnipeg again or that he doesn’t want it to work this time. He’s saying he doesn’t know if it will work. The truth is that no one really knows.

The Thrashers leave behind some die-hard fans, as well as some fans who never had a chance to see them play.

 

The landscape is definitely different than it was when the Jets left 15 years ago. Winnipeg has a new arena and a committed ownership group. The NHL has a salary cap and a revenue-sharing system. The Canadian dollar is strong.

 

There no doubt will be a honeymoon period in Winnipeg. People will buy tickets. The MTS Centre will be sold out and loud. The team might even contend for a playoff spot from the get-go.

 

This is not an expansion team. The lucky part for Winnipeg – and the unfortunate part for Atlanta, which does have some die-hard hockey fans and countless others who will never know what they were missing – is that the Thrashers were the NHL’s surprise team the first half of the season before falling off. They have an up-and-coming core of players, headlined by defenseman Dustin Byfuglien(notes).

 

The problem is that Winnipeg’s arena will be the smallest in the NHL. It seats only about 15,000, which means even if it is sold out for every game it can average only about 1,500 more fans than the Thrashers at least claim to have drawn last season.

 

Though the NHL has a salary cap and a revenue-sharing system, too many teams are still losing millions of dollars, too many are still looking for buyers or investors, and the collective bargaining agreement expires after next season.

 

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, painted as a villain when the Jets left under his watch, now must be the new team’s champion. He must not only keep the new system in negotiations among the owners and with the NHL Players’ Association, now led by executive director Don Fehr, he must try to tighten the system so that small-market teams can compete on the ice and be viable enterprises.

 

Oh, and the Canadian dollar better not weaken again, too.

 

Passion is not enough, as Winnipeg proved the first time. Population is not enough, as Atlanta has proven twice now, already having lost the Flames to Calgary in 1980. There must be a mix of the two, and it comes down to economics. Some foresee a northern migration, with the NHL returning to Quebec City, which plans to build an arena, and the league putting a second team in southern Ontario. Maybe so, but only if the system allows and market forces dictate.

The league's landscape has changed since the Jets left Winnipeg 15 years ago – but a lot of challenges remain for the city's NHL reincarnation.

 

 

Let’s assume the landscape stays just as it is today. The new team must operate with maximum support and efficiency just to make it work. What if Winnipeg can’t keep up as the salary cap and salary floor continue to rise? What if the team can’t keep its own players and attract free agents? What if it fails to draft and develop well? What if it doesn’t win year after year? Will the people of Winnipeg continue to support it enough? Should they?

 

Why did the NHL leave a large American market and return to the small Canadian market of Winnipeg?

 

Because the Thrashers stunk and never connected with enough fans in Atlanta. Because the Thrashers’ ownership group fought within itself, lost a lot of money, couldn’t find a local buyer and couldn’t wait to sell. Because the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, Ariz., pledged a second payment of $25 million to cover the NHL’s losses while it works on the sale of the Coyotes. Because a $60 million fee for relocating the Thrashers will help, too.

 

Because the Winnipeg ownership group kept its mouth shut and checkbook open as a backup plan for a long time – unlike BlackBerry baron Jim Balsillie, who made repeated public attempts to strongarm his way into NHL ownership. Because Winnipeg, with its loyal, hungry fans, can provide something of a happy ending.

 

But this is just the beginning, and there is only one way this story can be happy: Now that the good people of Winnipeg have an NHL team again, they have to keep it.

[erynthered]

Maybe I could have been clearer. Back in the early 80's going Buc's games it was more of the opponents fans in the stadium. That changed due to winning. 10 years top ten D, and a Super Bowl helped build a fan base with a waiting list of 5 years to get tickets.

 

When we were awarded teh Rays I bought Seasons tickets. It was laughable. Fan support was not what it is now, or has been the last few years with them winning 2 AL East titles and 1 WS trip. Granted, they still dont pull the amount of fans that they should, but its a far cry from when we got the team.

 

The Bolts were similiar to the Rays. Fan support when we got the team was not as good as its been for the last few years. Winning a Stanley Cup helped build a new generation of Hockey Fans down here. Again, granted it should be better, but its better than what is was.

Winning has helped all three of these professional sports teams.

 

Winning. Just like Charlie Sheen.

 

 

Just thought I'd add this chandler..

 

Just read that the long playoff run the Bolts had has helped their season ticket sales. 3800 new seasons tickets have been sold as of today. Winning helps.

 

Coupled with their renewals, they expect to have a sell out every night next season.

 

Cheers!

[Heels20X6]

Anyone else find it odd that Winnipeg now has the richest owner in professional sports? David Thomson - http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/10/07billionaires_David-Thomson-family_D47G.html

 

Somebody call this guy up and see if he's interested in keeping a football team in Buffalo!

 

I heard that he makes $500 million a year ON INTEREST.

[Marv's Neighbor]

Oh for sure, the Thrashers did not help themselves with only 1 playoff appearance in their entire history (and they were swept in the 1st round).

 

There was also a lot of mixed feelings about the way they tried to market the team this year. Bringing in 4-5 black players and using that as a selling point... http://atlanta.sbnation.com/atlanta-thrashers/2011/5/27/2188719/atlanta-thrashers-move-roster-players

Kind of like SLAP SHOT? GIVE'EM THE FOIL!

[Chandler#81]

Just thought I'd add this chandler..

 

Just read that the long playoff run the Bolts had has helped their season ticket sales. 3800 new seasons tickets have been sold as of today. Winning helps.

 

Coupled with their renewals, they expect to have a sell out every night next season.

 

Cheers!

 

They're a great watch, for sure! I thought they got hosed in the PENALTY-FREE 7th game vs. Bruins. The Leagues best Power Play gets zero opportunities w/ a trip to the Finals on the line... hmmm.

 

They (fan base) represented well during their Cup year, faded pretty quick but have returned because -as you say- Winning!

Still, the audience is decidedly pro Buffalo when the Sabres come to town..

[billsfan89]

Good to see Canada is more willing to support hockey than the South. Not that there can't be a few Southern hockey teams but I think that they should still move one more team from the South to Canada. The Florida Panthers seem like a good fit for a move two teams in Florida is overkill bring Quebec back into the league.

[paintmyhouse]

I will say this. I went to get some beers to watch game 1 with and the game had started. I had it on DVR, but I thought I would look for the the broadcast of the game. I live in Atlanta. It was not on any stations. Just click on the states, it is disappointing how many places there was no radio broadcast of the game.

 

http://www.westwoodone.com/stationfinder?action=stateSearch&state=GA&programID=363

 

 

Actually, there is no broadcast of it in Texas either. So many places, just 2 cities in California have the broadcast and 2 in Florida.

Edited June 3, 2011 by paintmyhouse