After three or four days of webmaster laziness, TSN moved their Jets Meter a few notches yesterday and a few more today. As you can see from the image I stole from the TSN website, we’re now sitting a mere three ticks from a seventh NHL team in Canada. You can follow the Jets Meter and read the latest TSN report here. The Winnipeg Free Press has abundant coverage, obviously. And if you want to be sad, you can follow the death watch in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The paper’s Thrashers section is here. But perhaps you should start with this piece, from which I excerpt:
In his most recent spoken example of the Wile E. Coyote/Acme explosives/NHL public relations disaster, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman somewhat admonished Thrashers fans for not buying tickets to what has been a crummy product for most of their 11 seasons.
Quoting here: “Demonstrating your dissatisfaction by not going to games is an interesting strategy. It’s your absolute right. But if it becomes a turnoff for anybody who might want to buy the franchise, the long-term consequences could be severe.”
Imagine if we applied this philosophy to other aspects in our life.
Buy a new car. If the doors fall off two blocks down the street, that’s OK. Just make sure you support that dealership by buying another one next year. Eat at a new restaurant. If dinner makes your stomach feel like there are a thousand screaming piranhas in it, that’s OK. Eat there the following week, because you wouldn’t want that restaurant to go out of business. And this time, bring friends!
It sucks when fans lose the team they love, especially when that team’s treated them as badly as the Thrashers has. Don’t blame U.S. hockey apathy for this one. But feel free to blame the NHL for propping up the Coyotes, who were the first choice to move north.
