2011 NHL Off Season

Tampa Has resigned Brewer to a 4 year deal and i must say, i didnt see that comming but im not surprised with Mr. Yzerman in the front office and the way Vinik runs thing. You guys must know that we are all standing back and expecting that Brad Richards will be signed at the first chance they get. i have heard on a few occasions just this week from fans "i love what they have done this year but i want to see Richy or ill be very disappointed". No, we wont riot for sports though, we will just be pouty for a while. Brad has even said "i want to be there, i never wanted to leave", you HAVE to sign guys like that, he WANTS to be here. he still live next to Vinny and he still spend most of the year in Tampa. anyways

A very neat story about what a name can mean and how people in the city of Winnipeg view the Jets. Im glad that Hockey has worked so well in Tampa, I hope i never have to feel like they do and i dont think i ever will.

WINNIPEG?Almost officially now, the Winnipeg Jets are back.

The name of the NHL?s Winnipeg franchise will be announced Friday night at the NHL draft in Minneapolis, where the team will select its first new player seventh overall.

Thousands of fans will pack the MTS Centre in downtown Winnipeg to celebrate the occasion.

The return of the Jets name is a move that nostalgic fans have pushed for over the past month. But the idea of a Jets return brought mixed emotions from fans still grapping with what the last 15 years meant to the city.

On Friday afternoon, George Cloutier sat in the 4 Play sports bar across the street from the MTS Centre, sporting a Tampa Bay Lightning T-shirt.

?My favourite player is Stamkos,? he says, defensively. ?I had this shirt before they announced the team.?


Like many in Winnipeg, Cloutier had to find a new hockey allegiance when the team left for Phoenix 15 years ago.

It?s kind of like the movie Castaway, when Fed Ex employee Tom Hanks returns from a stranded island to find that his family has held a funeral and his wife has remarried. She still loves him, of course, deep down ? but it?s complicated.

Winnipeg is Tom Hanks? wife. The broken city moved on when the Jets left, but there was a void.

?There was a big hole in the city,? says Jason Oltrob, having lunch with Cloutier. ?It didn?t feel like an official city anymore.?

The friends agree that it will take time for the city to get back what it lost in 1996.

?I know the Jets will be back in a couple months,? Cloutier says, ?It?s going to take time to say this is our team. It?s still going to be the Atlanta team. I had to look in the paper to see who all these players are.?

Then there are those who are still reeling from the great departure. Across the street from the MTS Centre, a hotdog vender who goes by the name of Yewche, was still holding out hope that the reports, confirmed by The Canadian Press and CBC, were wrong.

?The Jets left us. Why would we want to call them that?? he says at the corner of Portage and Donald. ?There?s a lot of nostalgia ? but there?s a certain bitterness. They left us.?

But as a hotdog vendor Yewche has special insight into the general feeling of the street. Portage Ave. has been aglow with optimism since True North announced the return of the NHL, he says.

?It?s had a huge impact,? Yweche says, noting the CFL?s Winnipeg Blue Bombers recently sold out their season tickets, riding a wave of sports enthusiasm.

?We were all diehard hockey fans. This is Manitoba. We?re all totally pumped about it. There?s a different atmosphere.?

And then there are those who argued for a more provincially inclusive name.

?I think it should be the Manitoba Jets,? says Mike Baker, a Manitoba Hydro worker. ?It just makes sense. You get all that rural support. Everybody loves it, and it?s just not a city team.?

The 31-year-old is from Thompson, Man., six hours north of Winnipeg.

Jason Kressock, 23, has a different perspective.

?Everyone?s talking about how it?s going to be Jets, Jets, Jets,? he says, sporting a blue Jets toque. ?The debate now is if it?s going to be Manitoba or Winnipeg. I?m from Winnipeg, so obviously I have a bias.?

Either way, Kressock is happy. His lost love has returned.

?I?ve been a Canucks fan for the past 15 years,? he says. ?Now I can come back home.?

I highlighted my fav part ;)

Link
 
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Also, if I were Winnipeg, I wouldn't release the team name before their first pick in the draft.

They didn't actually. It was leaked by reporters or something.

Now we just need the Nordiques back and Canada will be all set.
 
Im glad that Hockey has worked so well in Tampa, I hope i never have to feel like they do and i dont think i ever will.

I hope I've gotten as close to feeling like they did as I'm going to get. That constant, 'Are they selling the team?', 'Who is buying the team?', 'What if the team moves tomorrow?', 'What's going to happen with the team?' stuff is hard to go through. Thankfully, we seem to be past that with the new ownership and can now concentrate on cheering our team on to the Cup.
 
I hope I've gotten as close to feeling like they did as I'm going to get. That constant, 'Are they selling the team?', 'Who is buying the team?', 'What if the team moves tomorrow?', 'What's going to happen with the team?' stuff is hard to go through. Thankfully, we seem to be past that with the new ownership and can now concentrate on cheering our team on to the Cup.

yea, thank god we have an owner now like Jeff Vinik. He is great
 
It's nice seeing Nashville and Tampa both doing so well both on and off the ice. I'm sure both teams have good long futures in the NHL while Phoenix will most likely end up in Quebec City next year. Go les Coyotes de Quebec! :p
 
I think it's safe to say Quebec City is going to get the Coyotes, which is fantastic!
I'd also like to see the Hartford Whalers return.

They were the worst team in NHL ('91) on Genesis, yet I loved playing as them anyway. <3
 
I also liked the players Toronto chose as well. From what hears about them they sound like good players. The deal with the Avs seems nice too. Can't wait to see them all in their blue and whites :D
 
as a hard core hockey fan i would like to see more canadian teams but only if the market allows it.

That's the thing, isn't it? There's Quebec city, and possibly a second team in the Toronto area, though it's really questionable if that would actually work, and beyond that there's really nowhere else that I can see being able to support an NHL team. They consider Winnipeg almost too small a market for an NHL team, outside of Winnipeg every other metro area drops in population by like 250 000 at least. The only larger city without an NHL team is Quebec, for now. 32 million people spread out across 5000km :/
 
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Digging the Nashville Predators away jersey, but the yellow home jersey isn't doing it for me. I know those three stars represent the Tennessee state flag, but I can't help but think of a dragon ball whenever I see it LOL. Victoria's hockey team is in the WHL, a major junior hockey league. Many NHL players have been drafted from that league.

ufzxv.jpeg
 
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Good timing for four NHL divisions

ST. PAUL, Minn. ? High above the stage at the 2011 NHL draft hung the flags of the league?s 30 franchises ? the Western Conference in a row on top, the Eastern Conference in a row below, in alphabetical order, left to right.

The key to change hung in the lower right corner, a black flag with the NHL shield and the text ?WINNIPEG 2011-12.? Now that the Atlanta Thrashers have moved and become the new Winnipeg Jets, they will play in the Southeast Division for one more season. After that, the NHL will realign dramatically. One NHL executive said Saturday that he could ?guarantee? it.

It?s about time.

?Now it?s not perfect in everybody?s eyes,? Nashville Predators general manager David Poile said. ?I would think even in whatever realignment we do it may not be perfect. But I think it?s time for ? It?s not maybe time, but it?s certainly an opportunity for a change.?

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said during the Stanley Cup Final that the league would discuss realignment during the first half of the 2011-12 season, and if he had to guess, it would move toward ?a slightly more balanced schedule.?

Then Bettman made a proposal at Tuesday?s board of governors meeting, according to a report in the Ottawa Sun. Sources told the newspaper the league would have four divisions ? the Pacific, Midwest, East and South. Two divisions would have eight teams; two would have seven. Teams would play a balanced schedule in the regular season, with the top four teams in each division making the playoffs. The first round would be divisional play. Then teams would reseed for conference play.

One NHL executive said Saturday the plan would have four divisions ? two with eight teams, two with seven ? as outlined in the Ottawa Sun report, but he was vague about whether there would even be Western and Eastern Conferences. He said the divisions would be based on time zones, a common-sense solution to TV and travel problems that some teams face and have been frankly unfair for years. He said the league?s board of governors would rule on the issue in December, though there remains a lot to talk about.

?I think the league would be happy to hear anybody?s opinion,? Poile said. ?There?s nothing that?s been formulated. I haven?t seen any proposal. The league certainly hasn?t sent out anything, saying, ?Would you like to do this or that?? This is, I think, the start. So if you?ve got an idea, send it to me. Send it to the league. I think it will be looked at.?

With two conferences, six divisions and an unbalanced schedule, two teams in the Eastern time zone play in the Western Conference: the Detroit Red Wings and Columbus Blue Jackets. They must visit each team in the Pacific time zone twice each season, spending time, energy and money to make the trips, with a good portion of their road games starting at 10:30 p.m. for their local TV audience. They don?t play full home-and-home sets against each team in their own time zone.

The Wings have long wanted to move to the East, and Jackets GM Scott Howson said Saturday: ?I?m in favor of anything that puts us in the East.?

The situation isn?t much better for teams in the Central time zone. The Predators would like to move east, too. Then there are the Dallas Stars, who are isolated deep in the heart of Texas and play in the Pacific Division.

?I think it?s a good time to look at it,? Carolina Hurricanes GM Jim Rutherford said. ?It really doesn?t affect a lot of teams like ours, but Dallas has been in a little bit of an odd situation for a long time. Now, part of that is geography. You can?t change it. But I?m sure they?d like to get a little bit of a change.?

It simply makes sense to align the teams in terms of time zones and play a more balanced schedule. There would be less distance traveled and less jet lag for Western teams. There would be better TV times for more road games. Regional rivalries would still be able to develop, but every building would be able to host every team every season.

?Six divisions to four divisions, that could be good,? Poile said. ?For every team in the Western Conference, if we talked about a more balanced schedule, I think we?d be all in for that. So I think it?s an opportunity to put all of our heads together. ? Maybe we can at least help and appease everybody to a certain extent, and maybe it would be good for our fans also.?

Just remember that no matter what happens, not everyone will get what they want, and hockey tradition doesn?t always match up with geography.

?I?d like to play in a division with the weakest teams,? Rutherford said, smiling.

Teased that he played in the Southeast, Rutherford smiled even wider.

?Let me think now, the Stanley Cup champions ? Tampa, Carolina ?,? he said, referring to the 2004 and 2006 winners. ?It?s always the weakest division. Where are you guys from? Where do you live??


Four divisions? Could work.
 
edit: it looks like Hamilton (714,900) has roughly the same pop. as Quebec (717,600)
http://www.aneki.com/most_populous_cities_canada.html

While not in the Toronto metropolitan area, Hamilton's part of the megalopolis, that's why I didn't mention it. If there were another team in that region it would probably go in Hamilton. And I don't see it working, those southern Canadians don't even support their AHL team very well, and they're the Leafs own farm team. But I don't know, it could work, it would be an epic rivalry, but it just doesn't seem likely.
 
https://pic.armedcats.net/p/pe/pelicanhazard/2011/06/25/NHLtimezones.jpg

The EST is just a clusterfuck of teams. Good luck dividing that.
 
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The only other Western metros in the U.S. that could probably manage an NHL team, are Salt Lake City and Seattle.
Portland has tried to get a team, but the economics still don't work out..
 
https://pic.armedcats.net/p/pe/pelicanhazard/2011/06/25/NHLtimezones.jpg

The EST is just a clusterfuck of teams. Good luck dividing that.

The EST would be divided in two and the west would include the Oilers, Calgary, and Phoenix. The Midwest would be everything else.
 
Digging the Nashville Predators away jersey, but the yellow home jersey isn't doing it for me. I know those three stars represent the Tennessee state flag, but I can't help but think of a dragon ball whenever I see it LOL.

I'd rather they kept blue, but the team has been pushing yellow for awhile. Did they not learn anything from this?
nashville_predators_third_symbol.jpg
 
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