Monday, June 27, 2011

Winnipeg is Back

This may be old news to a lot of hockey fans, but I just found out today. The Winnipeg Jets are back! The city of Winnipeg lost their NHL team to Phoenix in 1996, but now the team is coming back to Winnipeg--well, sort of. There will be a team called the Winnipeg Jets playing in the NHL next year, but it won't be the same team that was founded in 1972. The Atlanta Thrashers franchise is trading in their golf shorts for sled dogs and moving up to Manitoba. Interesting tid bit of information: there will now be two NHL franchises that hold records under the team name of the Winnipeg Jets.



I'll tell you what NHL team I wish would come back: the Hartford Whalers. This franchise moved to Raleigh, NC and became the Carolina Hurricanes in 1997. This old school team, although they were founded 1972, and played in the WHA until 1979-80 season, when they joined the NHL, has a great looking logo, sharp colors, and a great name: the Whalers. It just sounds awesome. Not only that, but unlike Raleigh, Hartford is actually a hockey town. Sure, they never won a Cup as the Whalers and the Hurricanes won it in 2006, the NHL needs to go back to more of an old time hockey league. The post lock-out league just isn't working. The league wanted to open the game up and get rid of the clutching, grabbing, and hooking, but guess what? Scrapping is part of hockey!

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