Hundreds buy Jets merchandise after team makes playoffs

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This article was published 10/04/2015 (4120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg Jets fans snapped up jerseys, T-shirts, hoodies – anything white – in a Boxing Day-like frenzy this morning in anticipation of the first NHL playoff game in this city in 19 years.

More than 100 fanatics lined up outside the Jets Gear store prior to its 10 a.m. opening and a few hundred more swarmed in after the doors swung open. Items were snatched off hangers and hooks faster than they could be replaced by the store’s staff. Everybody had one thing on their minds – the return of the “Whiteout.”

Fred Carpenter clutched a couple of away jerseys because he knows you can’t wear blue once the post-season starts. He has vivid memories of the craziness during the White Outs from the ’80s and ’90s and he’s looking forward to helping create a new kind of excitement when the puck drops on the Jets first playoff game.

“Getting into the playoffs last night, it was just great. I wanted to run around streaking,” he said.

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Jets spokesman Scott Brown said the decision to embrace the Whiteout was made a couple of years ago – and was to kick in whenever the team qualified for the playoffs – but it wasn’t driven by the team’s marketing department. It was merely reflecting the pulse of the community, in much the same way as it did prior to naming the team nearly four years ago.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca