Not with a bang, but with a shrug

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This article was published 29/04/2023 (1101 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“The #NHLJets are so awful tonight that Vegas players are now waving ‘bye bye’ to them with half a period left to play. Salt, meet wound.” — Free Press hockey writer Mike McIntyre, via Twitter

“Many of the @NHLJets just don’t give a (expletive) do they?” — Kyle Irving, Winnipeg film maker and the son of Winnipeg Broadcast Legend Bob Irving.

“I’m so disappointed and disgusted right now… It’s the same crap we saw in February. Their better players were so much better than ours, it’s not even close.” — Winnipeg Jets head coach Rick Bowness

I’m not in the habit of breaking promises. But I am doing it right now.

After scorching the home team on Thursday by telling you the Winnipeg Jets were playing without a work ethic, I promised myself to keep my hands off the team for awhile.

Then Thursday night happened, and the group of well-paid professionals with what had been diagnosed as a work ethic deficit was now revealing a much deeper problem. Forty-eight hours ago on the Las Vegas strip, our guys gambled our reputation and their honour. Instead of giving us their best game, they gave us their worst. Our team gave us the middle finger — showed contempt for their fans, the community, and the game itself.

Most of us have never seen a team we supported perform this poorly in their final game of the playoffs. In every business, how you enter the stage is relevant. But how you exit is how you will be remembered.

None of us will ever forget their devastatingly dumb and dumber performance on April 27, 2023.

Please forgive me if I don’t pretend to be a pathologist. I am not doing an autopsy on what died in Vegas on Thursday night. Others can do that. My job is to say loudly what the common people, my people, are thinking privately. No worries. I know that you want me to bullhorn some truth to power.

Mark Chipman, clean house. Get out the vacuum, and leave no speck behind. Begin by dusting your general manager. He’s been here for a dozen years. Let’s not make it a baker’s dozen, Mr. Chipman. You know better than anyone that the teams he put together have quit on him, have abandoned us several times over the years and so it’s high time to say hello to a new manager.

Just before the debacle of the 2023 first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs began, everyone in Winnipeg got a heads up that there was trouble in the house that Chipman built. A video was released encouraging fresh ticket sales. The pandemic and the performance of the team was seeing far too many empty seats and we have been told time and again that in a very small arena by NHL standards, all 15,000 of those seats need to be filled every night.

It’s no secret that’s not happening. On most nights there are a thousand or more seats begging for behinds. And so even though tickets aren’t cheap, and the hot dogs and refreshments aren’t selling at Costco prices, the team loses money.

The marketing video carried a message that was unmistakably desperate. It alluded to the original version of the NHL Jets which imploded in the ‘90s. To spur ticket sales the voiceover on the video harkened back to the withering of the team. The words spoken were ominous, over the top, and offensive. “What was once lost we found once more. But never forget. Never again.”

The message was clear. Buy tickets or else we’re gone. It’s happened before and it can happen again.

When I heard the last two words of the message, “Never again”, I asked myself who wrote this thing? Doesn’t every educated person in the city that houses a national museum for human rights understand that “Never Again” is about the Holocaust?

I was as sad as anyone on April 28, 1996 when the first edition of the NHL Jets played their last game at the Winnipeg Arena and packed their bags for Arizona. Yesterday was the 27th anniversary of one of Winnipeg’s darkest days.

But Winnipeg wasn’t Auschwitz and the Jets shouldn’t need to hear that from a child of Holocaust survivors, which is what I am.

Before we shut down for today, I’m not accusing the Jets employee who approved the video message of knowing what they were doing. Coach Bowness might have been thinking that same thought, Thursday night in Vegas.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster.

charles@charlesadler.com