What the Dickens is happening in Winnipeg?
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness."
Winnipeg dominates the keystone province of the greatest hockey country in the world. It is a hotbed of hockey talent and home to some of the continent's most faithful hockey fans. But it doesn't command respect. Set aside all the snide chatter about mosquitoes and arctic winters, never was disgrace more visibly vented than when the National Hockey League withdrew its franchise in the mid-1990s and plunked it into the Arizona desert.
This was a pill too bitter for many citizens of the good city in the heartland of the Canadian Prairies to swallow. And their resentment did not thaw as the decades passed. Nay, it hardened into an icy “bring-back-the-Jets" resolve, a jilted lover returning time and again to the altar to reclaim the bride wooed from him with promises of great fortune.
The wrath of these citizens was never toward the team, which continued to sparkle like a jewel in its new, ill-suited setting. Instead, they funneled their indignation against the king of short stature on the throne of the NHL. He it was who wrested the bride from her natural home with a mirage of stratospheric revenue from television rights and the lustrous allure of big market good times.
Hockey heaven
“It was the spring of hope." What vindictive joy in Winnipeg, then, when the inevitable occurred and the franchise in the desert melted like a plastic dish in a hot oven, raising a lingering stink that made known the folly of the ill-conceived scheme. Such perverse joy when the great experiment of hockey in the southern states spiraled its owners into annual losses of millions and talented teams played to empty arenas. Such jubilation when the hockey gods finally deigned to return an NHL franchise to the forsaken city.
Along with the prospect of a major team returning to Winnipeg came a stern lecture about the need to support the team with long-term ticket sales. Hockey-starved citizens in a city of small size could not tolerate such effrontery. So rally they did to fill the NHL's pockets and stoke its coffers. Newspapers, radio stations and digital media fueled a frenzy of pent-up demand into an orgy of hockey lust and wanton desire to commit credit card numbers to an online scramble for scarce (and pricey) arena seats.
“This is one great city," enthused a booster. “Winnipeg is the only NHL market that required season's ticket purchasers to make a three- to five-year commitment. It didn't matter. Winnipeg ticket prices are some of the most expensive in the league. It didn't matter. Winnipeggers are notoriously cheap. It didn't matter. 'Drive to 13' [the ticket sale campaign] was an unmitigated success and Winnipeggers get the credit." They may, in fact, be getting the debt. Time will tell.
Icing called
“It was the winter of despair." Yet the hype and hoopla, the bread and circuses, did not gain the approval of all. “Paying more than $7,000 for season tickets to NHL Hockey in Winnipeg is so obscene it makes me livid," fumed a blogger. “That same money would sponsor 225 World Vision children for an entire year," he calculated. “Fill the arena for one year or feed 2,935,483 children. What a travesty."
In like manner, an anti-poverty advocate explains that “people working full time earning minimum wage make just over $12,000 annually. Welfare rates are similar. It costs more than $7,000 annually to rent a two-bedroom apartment. It takes much creativity, and sacrifice, to pay for everything else on just $5,000 annually - food, transportation, clothing, heating, phone, childcare, medications and dental care."
He wonders about the priorities of a government that steadfastly refuses to raise welfare rates but finds plenty of money to lure entertainments to the province. Amidst the inducements, the deal to bring the NHL back to Winnipeg includes enough VLTs to raise an estimated $4-million per year for the owners of the franchise.
What would Charles Dickens say? “It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us. We were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way..."
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