With the soft attendance to start the season for Winnipeg there has been plenty of speculation from outside this province that it could spell trouble for the long-term viability of the Jets in the Manitoba capital. Of course if you look around the NHL soft attendance has also impacted markets like Buffalo and San Jose.
Jets co-owner Mark Chipman sat down with Darren Dreger to chat about this and presumably other topics as well (the full interview will be released on Thursday). On TSN’s Insider Trading they released a portion of the conversation between the hockey insider and the Executive Chairman of the Jets.
Dreger asked: “Is there any real threat of a sale, a relocation if this can’t get turned around?”
Chipman: “No”
The clip then went on.
Chipman: “I can see how somebody might, how you can ask that question, you know, because it happened once is it a concern it could happen again because you’re the smallest market. I’d say ‘Not on our watch’. We’ve been doing this far too long. We got into this for the very reason, for that heartbreak that you describe. It was that very emotion that brought us into this, that kept us in the fight to get a building built and then to acquire a team again. And then to have ten years of sellouts and two years of challenge brought on by a global pandemic. It would be a little extreme for us to say ‘Oh gee we’re not sure this works anymore’.”
They then went on to talk about whether the Jets were close to embracing a rebuild.
Watch it here. (Starts at 2:15 mark).
