Winnipeg Jets (original)

The **Winnipeg Jets** were a team in the National Hockey League. They competed in the Western Conference. They moved to Arizona and became the Phoenix Coyotes (now Arizona Coyotes).

## History

### The WHA years (1972–1979)

The NHL had recently expanded to 16 teams, adding franchises in many hockey-hungry cities (only one in Canada), but also in Atlanta, Oakland and Los Angeles. The WHA brought major professional hockey to Ottawa, Quebec City, Winnipeg, Edmonton and later Calgary.

On December 27, 1971, Winnipeg was granted one of the founding franchises in the WHA, to Ben Hatskin, a local figure who made his wealth in cardboard shipping containers. The team took their name from the Winnipeg Jets of the Western Canada Hockey League.

The Jets' first signing was Norm Beaudin ("the Original Jet") and the first major signing was Bobby Hull. Hull's acquisition, partially financed by the rest of the WHA's teams, gave the league instant credibility and paved the way for other NHL stars to bolt to the upstart league.

The Jets were further noteworthy in hockey history for being the first North American club seriously to explore Europe as a source of hockey talent.

Winnipeg's fortunes were bolstered by acquisitions such as Swedish forwards Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson, who starred with Hull on the WHA's most famous and successful forward line (nicknamed "the Hot Line"), and defenceman Lars-Erik Sjoberg, who would serve as the team's captain and win accolades as the WHA's best defenceman.

Behind these players and other European stars such as Willy Lindstrom, Kent Nilsson, Veli-Pekka Ketola, leavened by players such as Peter Sullivan, Norm Beaudin and goaltender Joe Daley, the Jets were the most successful team in the short-lived WHA.

The team won the Avco World Trophy three times, including in the league's final season against Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers. The Jets made the finals five of the WHA's seven seasons.

Another notable accomplishment was the Jets' 5–3 victory over the Soviet National team on January 5, 1978.

In the WHA's last season, Kent Nilsson had 107 points, while Morris Lukowich had 65 goals, and Peter Sullivan had 46 goals and 86 points. The Jets made it to the Avco Cup and Gary Smith gave up the last goal in WHA history to Dave Semenko in a 7–3 Jets win.[4]

### The NHL years (1979–1996)

By 1979, the vast majority of the WHA's teams had folded, but the Jets were still going strong and they were absorbed into the NHL along with the Nordiques, Oilers and Hartford Whalers.

However, they had to pay a high price for a berth in the more established league by giving up three of their top six scorers (the core of the last WHA champion in a reclamation draft).

They were also forced to draft 18th out of 21 teams.

In the draft, they opted to protect defenceman Scott Campbell, who had shown a good deal of promise in the last WHA season. However, Campbell suffered from chronic asthma that was only exacerbated by Winnipeg's frigid weather. The asthma drove him out of the league entirely by 1982.

With a decimated roster, the Jets finished dead last in the league for the next two seasons, including a horrendous nine-win season in 1980–81 that still ranks as the worst in Jets/Coyotes history.

This stands in marked contrast to the other 1979 Avco Cup finalist, the Oilers, who became one of the most successful teams during the 1980s.

The Jets' first two wretched NHL seasons did net them high draft picks; in the 1980 draft they picked Dave Babych second overall and in 1981, they drafted future Hall of Fame member Dale Hawerchuk first overall.

The team developed a solid core of players by the mid-1980s with Hawerchuk, Thomas Steen, Paul MacLean, Randy Carlyle, Laurie Boschman, Doug Smail and David Ellett providing a strong nucleus.

Led by Hawerchuk, Steen, Babych and Carlyle, the Jets returned to respectability fairly quickly, and made the playoffs 11 times in the next 15 years.

However, regular-season success did not transfer over into the playoffs. This was because Winnipeg played in the same division as the Oilers and Calgary Flames; by some accounts, the two best teams in the league during the second half of the 1980s.

Due to the way the playoffs were structured at the time, whenever the Jets made the playoffs, they faced the near-certainty of having to beat either the Oilers or the Flames (or both) to get to the Campbell Conference Finals.

At the time, the top four teams in each division made the playoffs, with the regular-season division winner playing against the fourth-place team and the regular-season runner-up playing the third-place team in the division semifinals.

The division semifinal winners advanced to the division finals, and the two division final winners would meet in the conference finals.

For example in the 1984–85 season, they finished with the fourth-best record in the entire league (behind only Philadelphia, Edmonton and Washington). They also notched 96 points, which would remain the franchise's best as an NHL team until the 2009–10 Coyotes racked up the franchise's second 100-point season (and first as an NHL team).

While they managed to dispatch the Flames (with the league's fifth-best record) in four games in the best-of-five division semi-final, they were swept by the eventual Stanley Cup champion Oilers in the division final.

In fact, Winnipeg and Edmonton played each other in the playoffs six times between 1983 and 1990.

The Oilers not only won every series, but held the Jets to only four total victories. Five of those times (1984, 1985, 1987, 1988, and 1990), the Oilers went on to win the Stanley Cup.

The Jets would win only one other playoff series, in 1987 (defeating Calgary in the division semi-final before losing to Edmonton in the division final).

### Franchise demise and relocation

As the NHL expanded in the United States and free agency rules were liberalized, operating costs and salaries grew rapidly. This development hit the league's Canadian teams particularly hard.

Moreover, the revised free agency rules gave players the leverage to demand being paid in U.S. dollars.

Until about the early 1990s, Canadian teams were able to pay most of their players in Canadian dollars (with the only exceptions being contracts acquired in trades from U.S. teams).

However, since the Canadian teams still collected most of their revenue in Canadian dollars, having to pay players in U.S. dollars proved to be a serious drain on finances given the declining value of the Canadian dollar.

By 1996, the exchange rate was $1.40 Canadian for each American dollar. Winnipeg felt the pinch especially hard as it had always been one of the smallest markets in the league. For most of their NHL tenure, Winnipeg was the second-smallest market, and became the smallest market after the Quebec Nordiques moved to Denver as the Colorado Avalanche in 1995.

Despite a loyal fan following, serious doubts were raised about whether Winnipeg could support an NHL team in this new environment. Additionally, their home arena, Winnipeg Arena, was an aging building with no luxury suites and seating with obstructed views.

Attempts to find a local buyer were unsuccessful, with league commissioner Gary Bettman saying, "there doesn't seem to be anybody, in a serious fashion, who wants to own the franchise."

After an eleventh-hour effort by a team of local businessmen, dubbed the Spirit of Manitoba, fell through, team owner Barry Shenkarow sold the team to American businessmen Steven Gluckstern and Richard Burke.

Burke and Gluckstern originally planned to move the team to Minnesota (which had lost the North Stars to Dallas in 1993), but when negotiations for a lease agreement with the landlords of the Target Center fell through, the new owners eventually reached an agreement with Phoenix businessman Jerry Colangelo that saw the team move to Arizona and become the Phoenix Coyotes.

The Winnipeg Jets played their last-ever game on April 28, 1996, a home playoff loss to the Detroit Red Wings by a score of 4–1. Norm Maciver scored the last goal in Jets history.

Winnipeg was not without hockey for long, however; the International Hockey League's Minnesota Moose moved to Winnipeg as the Manitoba Moose a few months after it was announced that the Jets were leaving town.

The team later joined the American Hockey League as the affiliate of the Vancouver Canucks when the IHL collapsed.

During their history, the Jets retired two numbers: Bobby Hull's #9 and Thomas Steen's #25. Both numbers hang in the Coyotes' current home, Gila River Arena, in the Jets' old blue-red-white colour scheme. Dale Hawerchuk's No. 10 was added in 2006, in the Coyotes' current sand-red-black scheme.

Another tradition that was retained when the franchise moved to Phoenix was the "whiteout", in which fans wore all white to home playoff games. The franchise finally won a playoff series in 2012, their first in 25 years, en route to reaching the Conference Finals for the first time where they were defeated by the eventual champions Los Angeles Kings.

Hull's No. 9 jersey was temporarily unretired with the acquisition of his son Brett by the Coyotes. Brett wore his father's famous jersey until his own retirement on October 15, 2005, subsequent to which the number was re-retired.

In their new market, the Coyotes have continued to struggle both on and off the ice, culminating in a bankruptcy in 2009.

The NHL took over the franchise late in the 2008-09 season. In the midst of the league's search for a new Coyotes owner, True North Sports and Entertainment made two bids with the intent of returning the franchise to Winnipeg. True North also considered buying the Nashville Predators, likely to move it to Winnipeg.

These bids were turned down only after the league reached an agreement with the municipal government, which agreed to subsidize the Coyotes' losses in order to keep the Coyotes in Phoenix, so True North turned its attention to the financially struggling Atlanta Thrashers, moving it to Winnipeg to become the second incarnation of the Jets (see below).

The team finally broke its playoff series drought in 2011-12, a season in which they won their first division title as an NHL team (in Winnipeg or Phoenix) and advanced all the way to the Western Conference Final. However, they have not returned to the playoffs since.

Former Coyotes team captain Shane Doan (who was drafted seventh overall by the Jets prior to their last season in Winnipeg and played his rookie season in Winnipeg), played his entire career for the Jets/Coyotes franchise. He was the last player from the original Jets to still be active in the NHL until his retirement in 2017.

The only other former original Winnipeg Jet still active in professional hockey is Deron Quint, who is currently playing in the DEL in Germany.

## Coaching History

* 1979-1980: Tom McVie
* 1980: Bill Sutherland
* 1980: Tom McVie
* 1980-1981: Bill Sutherland
* 1981: Mike Smith
* 1981-1983: Tom Watt
* 1983-1986: Barry Long
* 1986: John Ferguson, Sr.
* 1986-1989: Dan Maloney
* 1989: Rick Bowness
* 1989-1991: Bob Murdoch
* 1991-1995: John Paddock
* 1995-1996: Terry Simpson

## Facts

* Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba
* Arena: Winnipeg Arena

## Players

* Randy Carlyle
* Bob Essensa
* Dale Hawerchuk
* Brad Jones
* Thomas Steen
* Keith Tkachuk