One Thrashers fan wrote a heartfelt letter to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman last weekend, imploring him “to simply not give up on Atlanta just yet.”
Another fan is parking the $3,000 he hopes to spend on Thrashers season tickets in the bank until he knows whether the team will be here next season.
This is a tense and trying time for some Atlanta hockey fans, who are concerned they might wake up one morning to find the Thrashers on their way to Winnipeg, Manitoba.
The Thrashers’ ownership group, ready to shed the team’s financial losses, has said it is seeking a buyer who will keep the franchise in Atlanta, but that relocation is a possibility if one can’t be found. Meanwhile, another NHL franchise that had been sought by Winnipeg — the league-owned Phoenix Coyotes — will at least temporarily avert relocation if the city of Glendale, Ariz., agrees to pay $25 million toward the team’s losses for the second consecutive year. Glendale’s city council was scheduled to vote on the matter Tuesday night.
Thrashers fans fret what could come next: the Winnipeg bid group, True North Sports and Entertainment, setting its sights solely on the Thrashers.
“I’m a big fan, so the thought of the team not being here is disheartening,” said Jeremy Heilpern, the Buckhead resident who wrote to Bettman and encouraged others to do likewise.
“I had given a lot of thought to how someone could go about trying to make a difference in this situation,” Heilpern, 22, said. “As fans who don’t have $150 million to throw at the situation ... I thought if we had a flood of emails pouring into [Bettman’s] inbox, maybe the voice of the fans of Atlanta could be heard a little bit.”
Heilpern’s letter acknowledged the “numerous empty seats” at Philips Arena for some games, but argued that is an indictment of “11 years of a subpar on-ice product” rather than of the city’s interest in the sport.
“The problem isn’t hockey, Mr. Bettman,” Heilpern wrote. “It’s years of ownership and management that [have] seemed to do everything in their power to drive Atlanta hockey into the ground.”
The Thrashers have reached the playoffs once in their 11-season existence, have never won a postseason game and have ranked among the NHL’s bottom four teams in attendance for each of the past three seasons. The Thrashers’ operating losses have exceeded $130 million since 2005, according to court documents filed by the team’s owners.
All of that puts the franchise in a precarious place.
Kevin Harrington has held Thrashers season tickets since 2006, making the four-hour round trip from his Anderson, S.C., home for about 80 percent of the games at Philips Arena. He plans to continue that routine if the Thrashers remain here, “but right now we are putting our season-ticket money in a saving account just in case they do move,” he said.
For all of the uncertainty about the Thrashers’ future, there also is anger among some fans about the state of affairs. While much of the animosity is directed toward ownership and management, the NHL also draws the wrath of some who feel the league’s oft-cited “covenant with fans” to do everything possible to preserve teams in their current markets is not evidenced here.
“Many of us fans watched as Gary Bettman saved struggling franchises in Nashville and Tampa over the past several years,” season-ticket holder Tony L. Blair, an attorney who lives in Lawrenceville, said by email. “We continue to watch the league go to extraordinary lengths to save what many feel is a lost cause, that being the Phoenix Coyotes. Yet, many Thrashers fans are distressed by what appears to be on the surface the lack of the same commitment toward the Atlanta market.”
Blair added: “We as Thrasher fans must ask, where is the justice in this? Are we not deserving [of] the same devotion and loyalty as other troubled franchises? This very question, I think, is the lynchpin of the entire episode. I think it comes down to, will the league give up the market?
“If yes, we lose the team. If not, then there is an opportunity for transition to new ownership who will, I believe, excite the current fan base and hopefully re-energize the local hockey community.”
Jason Zaikov, 34, grew up in New York as a Rangers fan and moved to Atlanta 10 years ago. The Thrashers gradually won him over, and he officially changed allegiances when the organization held a promotion in which fans could exchange old jerseys of other teams for new Thrashers jerseys. He calls the team’s first playoff game in 2007 “one of the best sports experiences of my life.”
Zaikov hears the relocation chatter, but is trying to stay optimistic.
“I’m trying to ignore it, honestly,” he said. “I’d like to think the Thrashers will be here because it’s rare for any sport to just pick up a team and move it quickly.”
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