Ice Cold Takes: The NHL needs to do a better job remembering the Atlanta Thrashers

Ice Cold Takes is a weekly humor column that is supposed to focus on what is trending around the NHL, but I doubt you want to hear me rave about the Bruins again.

The Boston Bruins are still the best team in the NHL. Wait! Don’t leave. I’m not going to spend another column talking about exactly how good the Bruins are because I know most of you are sick of hearing it (they are the best team in the NHL, though). Today, there will be no Bruins talk.

Today’s column ended up being a bit of a rant, but we’ll kick it off with a rapid-fire version of its old format as to not confuse too many readers. Check out these tweets:

https://twitter.com/NHL/status/1192465669620731904

https://twitter.com/NCAAIceHockey/status/1191147076358492166

Wow! Someone could have written an entire column about those events! Instead, I’m going to talk about Mariah Carey and the Atlanta Thrashers. If you don’t like it, please read it anyway. I can’t afford to lose the few of you who are still reading these columns.

Mariah Carey, hockey fan?

It’s basically Christmas season (because the stores are telling us so) and Mariah Carey has awoken from her palace to grace us all with the holiday song gold standard of the past

two

three (we’re getting old) decades, “All I Want For Christmas.” The NHL had some fun with it and Mariah played along.

First of all, queen, you are far better looking than that scrub Drew Doughty. Second, is there a single bigger holiday song than “All I Want For Christmas”?

My wife and I had this discussion the other night. When I asked her this question, she immediately went to the classics: “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Frosty the Snowman,” “Let It Snow,” etc. “Jingle Bells” may be the only one that comes close, but still, these songs are usually packaged together, recorded and rerecorded by multiple artists and presented with a generic “Hey it’s almost Christmas” attitude. Mariah’s banger is Christmas.

A single song heard around the world on November 1st, pumping through the speakers of your local Walmart every 15 minutes. A single song that signifies Christmas for everyone under 40 who grew up listening to it. “All I Want For Christmas” is the number one Christmas song and I truly believe that 10 years from now, everyone will believe this. You or your family may have a go-to song, but Mariah’s is universally loved by everyone, making it the biggest and best Christmas song in the world.

The Atlanta Thrashers

From 1990 to 2010, the league was graced with the presence of the Atlanta Thrashers, a franchise that was geographically challenged from the start, but had sick jerseys. The Thrashers weren’t a good hockey franchise, despite their average attendance never dipping below 13,000. Wait… what? The attendance was closer to 13 than 13,000. That must have been a typo.

The Thrashers and Phoenix Coyotes used to be a joke around the league. There are Canadian cities dying for a hockey franchise, others that could probably support upwards of seven teams, yet here we were with two teams in locations that didn’t care to have them. When you see the (definitely not fake) attendance numbers, remember that people were not paying $250 for a ticket in the upper deck like they are in Canada. In Toronto, the waiting list for tickets spans four generations. The best way to get season tickets is to inherit them. I’m not even joking.

Surprisingly, the NHL waited out the storm in Phoenix and eventually, a solid hockey community was born. Today, Arizona is producing some of hockey’s top talent. It doesn’t even matter that a handful of these players and prospects are the children of old players who played for the Coyotes, it matters that they are from Arizona. Kids in the area see quality NHL players from their home state and it pushes them towards the sport. This isn’t about how Arizona is a success story, though. This is about how Atlanta wasn’t.

The Thrashers were upset to leave Atlanta. You would be too, if you found out you were heading to Winnipeg. The problem was that fans of the team weren’t nearly as upset, mostly because there weren’t any fans to begin with. Reading about the Thrashers final stand is laughable. Check out this quote from a rally held before the team left Atlanta:

“The rally started at noon. Shortly before 3 p.m., Mann guessed that they had more than 100 signatures. She estimated 250 fans attended. Another estimate put the number at about 300.”

250, possibly upwards of 300? There are 10 times this amount of people in a Costco parking lot on Saturday morning. Most of us have been to house parties with more people. In Winnipeg, 300 people show up to a pizza place if word gets out that an NHL player is there eating, even if it’s in the blistering cold of winter. You probably have 300 contacts in your phone. This God awful tweet by Mariah Carey got 5600 times more support than the Thrashers did.

You may be at this point in the column and thinking “Where the hell is he going with this?” Valid question. In all honesty, I’m not entirely sure. What I am sure about, though, is that the NHL needs to do a better job acknowledging that the Thrashers existed. Whether joking or serious, we’re missing out on prime Atlanta Thrashers throwback potential.

Winnipeg lost their original hockey team to Arizona. There should be no ill will between the Jets and Atlanta. It’s been eight years. It’s time to start unleashing wicked Thrashers throwback jerseys, promoting Thrashers legends, having Thrashers nights, where fans can buy two-for-one tickets, trap music is played over the PA and local strippers get in free (Admittedly, I don’t know anything about Atlanta outside of what Rap music taught me). I mean, just look at these jerseys and tell me they wouldn’t heat up a Winnipeg winter.

https://twitter.com/HockeyHallFame/status/949393633165406209

When it comes down to it, all I want for Christmas is for the Atlanta Thrashers to come back, in any capacity. Get on it Winnipeg. Lord knows you need some sort of distraction to get everyone’s mind off of how this disaster of a season has started.

Keep your head up.