NHL comes back to Winnipeg!

01 Jun 2011 | Petr Polák

Everybody interested in NHL was speculating about that rumor during the last weeks. The team of Atlanta Thrashers would be sold to new owners and it probably will graduate in a movement of the club to Winnipeg. From yesterday it is not just a rumor. It’s a fact.

Incoming Thrashers’ owner True North Sports made this rumor real on Tuesday’s press conference in Winnipeg in the presence of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and his representative Bill Daly. The information was also validated by a press release on the Thrashers official website.

"Today, on behalf of my family, our partner David Thomson and our entire organization, I am excited beyond words to announce our purchase of the Atlanta Thrashers. In a sense, I guess you can say True North, our city and our province has received the call we've long since been waiting for," Mark Chipman, the True North Spors and Entertainment chairman said.

If the NHL Board of Governors will agree on June 21, not only the ownership of the Thrashers will be changed, but all the team will meet the migration across the North American map and NHL will come back to Winnipeg from 2011/12, 15 years from moving the Jets from Winnipeg to Phoenix.

"We don’t like to move franchises," Bettman said, "but sometimes we simply have no choice. Times have changed for Winnipeg as an NHL market, hockey in Canada has never been stronger and this is a wonderful time to add a club to Canada."
Thrashers came to NHL as a new-founded club in 1999 and now they are losing their NHL license after eleven seasons during which the club advanced into the Stanley Cup playoffs just once.

The representatives of Atlanta Spirit, LLC, Bruce Levenson and Michael Gearon wrote a letter to fans in which they’re regretting a need of relocation of the Thrashers: "It's extremely disappointing to all of us that it became necessary after all other options were exhausted. We want to express our gratitude to you, the fans, for the years of dedication you have offered to the Atlanta Thrashers."

This goodbye letter is a dot behind Atlanta’s second NHL shot. The first one started in 1972 when the first Atlanta NHL team was founded in Atlanta, and ended in 1980 when the Flames moved to Calgary.