Chipman knew no other name but Jets would do

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/11/2016 (3224 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was last month, during that hockey nostalgiafest officially known as the Heritage Classic, when a question best answered by Mark Chipman occurred to me.

What if the chairman of True North Sports & Entertainment and the Winnipeg Jets hockey club had chosen a different name than the Jets for the National Hockey League franchise? Would we have had a Heritage Classic in Winnipeg in October? Or ever?

That’s what I wanted to ask Chipman during that week when Dale Hawerchuk and Wayne Gretzky and the rest of the Jets and Oilers old-timers were roaming the city and facing off again before a stadium full of celebratory fans. Because, five years ago, when the True North front office was considering other names — and while the fans were wearing vintage Winnipeg Jets sweaters and signing a petition to bring back the name — there was a belief that even as Chipman was canvassing family, close friends and “guys I grew up playing hockey with,” that he was leaning away from the Jets and toward the snarl-faced Manitoba Moose logo on True North’s American Hockey League team.

“We considered a lot of names, we really did,” Chipman told the Free Press at the NHL draft in June 2011, the team’s first after being awarded the Atlanta Thrashers franchise, when “Jets” was finally announced as the club’s name. “We felt strongly about ‘Manitoba’ in a number of different scenarios…”

What I was also looking for when I reached out to Chipman was the deeper story behind that.

On Wednesday, when we finally connected, there was a semblance of synchronicity to the timing. Las Vegas, the first new NHL franchise since the Jets, had unveiled their team name — the Golden Knights — a day earlier. On the phone the next day, Chipman began answering my initial question about the Heritage Classic indirectly.

“One of the things I don’t know was fully understood was that we actually all but concluded a transaction to buy the Phoenix Coyotes the year before,” he said.

How close was it?

“The chairs were set up for a press conference on the floor of the MTS Centre.”

At that point in 2010, the NHL owned both the bankrupt Coyotes and the rights to the Jets name; rights that would have come with the franchise relocation back to Winnipeg.

“That was the first time that it made sense to have the ability to name them the Jets,” Chipman acknowledged.

When the Phoenix deal fell through, Chipman said the NHL gave him a “strong signal” the next available franchise would go to Winnipeg, as it did just a year later.

“And it was during that year that we contemplated other names.”

But why, I wondered, when the Jets was the natural No.1 choice, a name that’s been linked to Winnipeg since it joined the renegade World Hockey Association in the early 1970s.

“When you’re building plans for the relaunching of a team,” Chipman explained, “there’s a number of things you contemplate.”

Including, he said, the team name.

“And frankly, we talked about a number of names. None of them terribly seriously.”

By the sounds of what Chipman said next — and what he was quoted as saying at the 2011 draft — Manitoba Moose was taken at least somewhat seriously because they had so many loyal fans.

“There were people in our organization that felt strongly about it,” Chipman told me. “But we also decided to contemplate other names that had historical significance.”

Championship hockey teams from the past, such as the Winnipeg Falcons and Winnipeg Warriors.

“And we also said, ‘what about something entirely different?’ And we came up with a bear image. It was more of an exercise, than anything. Recognizing all along that we had the name Jets if we wanted it.”

I asked Chipman how soon after the franchise purchase in late May 2011 he decided to go with Jets.

“I would say right away.”

Yet it took a month before it was announced.

“To be honest, the one thing we grappled with wasn’t so much the name, but how to — what I said back then — is how do we authenticate the name.”

Most of us would have thought the WHA champion Jets and our first NHL team would have been enough.

What it also took, Chipman suggested, was obtaining the permission of the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Department of National Defence. True North wanted to model its Jets logo after the ones on RCAF planes. Those blessings came easily, which shouldn’t have been a surprise. A few years earlier, True North had honoured the 1948 Olympic champion RCAF Flyers at a Moose game where the team wore uniforms styled to salute five of the old airmen who were invited. Those uniforms were still in the club’s equipment room when Chipman took the designer of the Jets 2.0 apparel on a tour of the locker room.

“And I said, ‘it’s in there,’” Chipman recalled telling the designer as he pointed to the uniforms. “The look and feel of what we’re hoping to achieve for the new Jets was sort of in that colour palette. In that air force theme.”

“We would have picked the name in any event,” Chipman assured me.

The bonus for him was being able to relate the name, not just to the Winnipeg’s hockey heritage, but to the city’s air force history, too.

“On top of that, obviously, the No. 1 deciding factor, or criteria, was what our fans wanted. And that was obvious, right?”

I’d say so.

But, ultimately — just for the historic record — whose choice was it to bring back the Jets name?

“I guess, in the end, it was mine,” Chipman acknowledged. “But I say that cautiously, because I don’t want to appear to be taking credit for it.”

Well, he should take credit for it.

But, I was still looking for the answer to the question that had prompted the inquiry. The one that suggested beyond any doubt how important making the right decision turned out to be. Could Chipman imagine having played host to the Heritage Classic if he hadn’t named his team and ours the Winnipeg Jets.

“No,” he said immediately. “Well,” he added, “I don’t know that we would have had it, to be honest.”

That says it all about the importance of the name we take for granted now. And about listening to your audience.

At least, in part, I believe that’s why the fans give “True North” that shout-out during the national anthem before every home game. And why Chipman says it “never ceases to make the hair stand up on my arm.”

Chipman listened to them back then. And now Jets’ fans are making sure he always will.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca