NHL Trading Class for Cash by Clearing Jets’ Departure

So this is what Gary Bettman had in mind when he spoke of his “vision” for professional hockey in the 1990s.

Pocket-sized regular seasons, as opposed to pocket schedules.

Cartoon robot battles to spice up Sunday national telecasts.

Dallas in the playoffs, Montreal out of them.

And, it appears, far fewer Hockey Nights In Canada.

Winnipeg has lost its Jets. Quebec is gripping its Nordiques with a trembling, sweaty palm. Edmonton prays that every new season with the Oilers won’t be its last. And behind closed doors at the NHL offices, the general consensus about Ottawa is that the Senators ought to be playing in Charlotte, Houston, Phoenix or any one of those fine, ripe-for-the-plucking “Sun Belt” cities.

Next season, the Jets will play their home games south of the border, probably in Minnesota, which rights one wrong while wronging a true hockey town--a dying breed in Bettman’s NHL--where the locals loved their hockey unconditionally, be it fair, poor, abysmal or thoroughly wretched.

The Winnipeg Jets never won the Stanley Cup. Never came close. They once won the Avco Trophy, the bauble the old World Hockey Assn. used to present its champion.

(You remember that heady scene--Lars-Erik Sjoberg hoisting Lord Avco’s Cup around Winnipeg Arena while Queen Elizabeth looked down from the rafters, frowning, as her massive portrait did at every Jets home game, up to and including the last one. And, of course, the raucous celebration that followed. Cars would have been torched for sure, except that in that weather, no match could keep a flame.)

But since merging with the NHL in 1979, the Jets advanced beyond the first round of the playoffs twice, and never won a second-round series. They were the Sacramento Kings of pro hockey--just kind of there .

But that was enough for the people of Winnipeg. The Jets were there. If not quite a reason to live, Jet hockey was a reason to get out of the house--and the Jets were beloved for that. So what if attending a home game meant pulling on the thermal underwear, sweat shirt, sweater, parka, multiple pairs of socks, boots, ski mask, scarf, mittens and fur-lined hat, venturing out into the blizzard and plowing all the way to the arena parking lot, where electrical outlets were provided in order to hook up the car-battery heater for the next three hours? Dale Hawerchuk was taking his shift that night.

In Winnipeg, that’s as close to godliness as it gets.

Or Lose-i-peg, as the franchise came to be known around the league. Three times in the last five seasons, the Jets failed to make the NHL’s come-one, come-all playoffs and will now close shop on the heels of back-to-back 24-51-9 and 16-25-7 finishes. Once you got past high-scoring winger Teemu Selanne, name recognition was tough sledding with the Jets. Teemu and Team Who? Anaheim fans knew them mostly as the guys near the Arctic Circle the Ducks always beat.

Yet, the fans in Winnipeg never left the Jets’ side. The Jets placed 10th in the Western Conference in 1995, last in the Central Division, and averaged more than 13,000 per home game in a dilapidated old barn that holds 15,562.

It wasn’t fan indifference that did in Winnipeg; it was league indifference to Winnipeg. The league view, in 25 words or less: Backwoods outpost, frostbite, can’t get there from here, bad building, shallow pockets, no luxury boxes, blue collar fans, no teal, not in Florida.

In three words or less: Let ‘em fly.

Bettman often talked about the situations in Winnipeg and Quebec as if they were Excedrin headaches 1 and 2. Once we take care of these two problems, he said the other day, there won’t be anymore problems. Take care of these two problems. Translation: Relocate them in Minneapolis and Denver.

Minneapolis needs an NHL team because Bettman, on the job barely days, rubber-stamped the North Stars’ move to Dallas, where they became the Seventh Place Stars. Minneapolis was jobbed, but taking from Winnipeg to make the Twin Cities whole once more is rotten business.

It’s a lucky thing fights didn’t break out in the press box Tuesday night during the Jets’ final game in Winnipeg. Newspaper and television reporters from the Twin Cities were on hand for the story--vultures, in the misty eyes of the Winnipeg media. One Winnipeg writer refused a Minnesota writer permission to use his seat for a phone call. Voices were raised. Arguments had to be quelled.

It was petty, it was unseemly, but these were Winnipeg sportswriters losing, in essence, their livelihood. Once the Jets go, what happens to them? The Winnipeg Free Press doesn’t need 13 Blue Bomber beat writers.

The seconds were ticking down on Winnipeg’s lone claim to major-league status. Fans whose boos had drowned out “The Star-Spangled Banner” stood and cheered the Jets for the final five minutes of the game--fittingly, a 2-1 loss to the Kings.

Now, the Jets go up for auction, to be sold to the highest bidder--most likely Minnesota, or, much worse, Atlanta. Meanwhile, Winnipeg gets paved over by the NHL bulldozers, sacrificed in the cause of Pro Hockey, Growth Sport. Good thing Bettman doesn’t run the NFL. Within two years, the Packers would be leaving Green Bay for Orlando.

Bettman would argue that the end justifies the means and NHL hockey should be returning to Minnesota and isn’t that a grand and glorious thing?

But no city wants to gain a sports franchise in such an underhanded and tawdry manner, does it, St. Louis?