to move up and down
Kicking off a road trip
This Senators fan may have been mocked by a small child, but Ottawa got the last laugh with a wild 6-4 win over the Jets in Winnipeg on Tuesday. Photo: Fred Greenslade/Reuters
OMB
Justin Bieber is everywhere. EVERYWHERE. The singer and his girlfriend Selena Gomez watch the NHL game between the Carolina Hurricanes and Winnipeg Jets in Winnipeg. Photo: Fred Greenslade/Reuters
GALLERY: Shelly Rypien, who is the mother of late NHL player Rick Rypien, drops the puck for the ceremonial face off at the Jets’ home opener on Sunday. Todd Korol/Reuters
GALLERY: A wide view of the MTS Centre during the home opener of the Winnipeg Jets. Todd Korol/Reuters
GALLERY: They’re back! The Winnipeg Jets are playing their first game at home. Marianne Helm/Getty Images
Jets return a missing piece of Winnipeg
Not only have the Winnipeg Jets returned to fulfill the physical role of a National Hockey League team in town, it might not be a stretch to argue the Jets have returned to replace a missing piece of the city itself. Photo: Marianne Helm/Getty Images
The Winnipeg Jets played their first home game, albeit an exhibition one, to a full house on Tuesday. Marianne Helm/Getty Images
Finally… the new Winnipeg Jets jerseys have been unveiled. (Photo: Fred Greenslade/Reuters)
Ice technicians install the Winnipeg Jets logo at centre ice of the MTS Centre. Fred Greenslade/Reuters
Dave Bidini: It’s not always the best game you can name
This summer, two hockey players died: a record body count. People will tell you that these deaths were the result of fighting and concussions, and the damage suffered while playing a savage sport. All of this is true, but both players were also emotionally troubled, suffering bleak endings to a kind of life that many of us hold in wonder. We may view the terrible demise of Derek Boogaard, the New York Rangers enforcer who died in May, and Rick Rypien, the recent Vancouver Canuck and intended Winnipeg Jet who died earlier this week, as fall from graces. But this is to assume that grace exists — or is encouraged to exist — in a culture that is rarely blamed whenever a player slips off the Earth. How many songs, poems, open-line laments, sports-talk post-mortems or morning columns must we voice before we study that culture for what it really is? How many stories about dead hockey players do we have to tell before they stop dying? (Don Healy/Regina Leader-Post)
As news circulated through the hockey community on Monday night that Winnipeg Jets forward Rick Rypien had been found dead, few took the news harder than his former teammate and friend Jason Jaffray.
Here is the Winnipeg Jets’ new logo
It was inspired by the Royal Canadian Air Force. Thumbs up or down?
The Winnipeg Jets are back
CBC has confirmed the NHL franchise in Winnipeg will be using its original name. (Photo: Fred Greesdale/Reuters)
A team by any other name … is not for Winnipeg
True North was naturally receiving plaudits from around the country on Tuesday for returning a seventh Canadian franchise to Winnipeg, and well they should. But the group also seems oddly fixated on cutting ties with the past. How can this team not be called the Winnipeg Jets? Consider that all the recent stories about Jets merchandise selling out across town also included this coda from retailers: Jets stuff has always sold well. People have, for 15 years, longed for the return of the Jets. Now they are to be told that the prodigal franchise is to be called the Manitoba Somethings? Ugh. Time to put that vintage Hawerchuk jersey away. Same too the vintage Soetaert.
There is nothing wrong with embracing the city’s hockey history, and spare us the talk of a clean start. Yes, the Jets struggled in their first go-round, but the Boston Red Sox couldn’t win a thing for 86 years, and no one tried calling them the Massachusetts Moose.
It’s official: The NHL returns to Winnipeg
A decade and a half after Winnipeg’s National Hockey League team flew south, the Manitoba capital will once again host the best players in the world.
True North Sports and Entertainment announced Tuesday that it has purchased the Atlanta Thrashers from Atlanta Spirit and will move the team to Winnipeg’s MTS Centre, marking Canada’s seventh franchise.
