Here`s a rare hockey story.
Normally, when a sub-par or small-market hockey club comes to a city who`s market or team is bigger or more successful, most of the average home team ticket buyers will stay away. They'd rather wait for the likes of Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, or Connor McDavid to spend their hard-earned cash.
But as is the case for a small-market, lower-based salary structure team like the Jets, apparently the owners of said big-market clubs don`t mind hosting a team like the Jets (even though they have no choice due to scheduling of course.) But it seems that the Jets are in a unique situation of their own. Everybody knows Winnipeg Jets fans are one of (if not the most) loudest, knowledgeable and rabid fan basis in the hockey universe. And to prove that even more, Paul Wiecek of the Winnipeg Free Press has discovered that the high number of Jets fans that follow the team on the road, not only let a loud vocal support to the Jets that can clearly be heard on television (and by the players) but these same Jets fans actually benefit the opposing teams box office as well:
VANCOUVER — Two games in three days against the same small-market Canadian team, all in the week before Christmas.
That schedule would be an attendance-killer in a lot of buildings in the NHL, but in Vancouver, the Canucks were willing to oblige a rare two-game set against the Winnipeg Jets this week.
That’s because in Vancouver — as in Calgary, Edmonton, St. Paul, Minn., Miami and Glendale, Ariz. — the Jets are box office boffo.
While Winnipeg will never be the scalpers’ bonanza NHL teams such as the Chicago Blackhawks, Pittsburgh Penguins and Montreal Canadiens are, the little old Jets — thanks in large part to fiercely loyal communities of Winnipeg expatriates — have increasingly carved out a niche of their own as a visiting team that can be good for the home team’s business.
According to the online ticket re-seller Vivid Seats, the Jets punch above their weight class — and small Canadian market status — when it comes to selling tickets in other NHL cities.
According to the website, the Jets are tied for 17th in the NHL in terms of the effect they have on median ticket prices in the buildings they visit.
That’s well behind the likes of Chicago — the NHL’s best road draw, by a mile — but still ahead of some other big-market Central Division rivals, including the Dallas Stars, St. Louis Blues, Nashville Predators and Colorado Avalanche.
In Calgary, for instance, Flames staffers now rank the Jets as their fourth-best draw in the NHL, behind only the Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal and the Edmonton Oilers.
In Arizona, the Jets have long been the Coyotes’ single-best draw in a U.S. state where many Winnipeg snowbirds vacation and/or have winter homes.
And then there’s Minnesota, where Jets fans show up in such huge numbers the Wild two seasons ago had the Canadian anthem performed in French prior to one game against the Jets just to prevent Winnipeggers in the building from announcing their presence with a full-throated "True North!"
A note on that "True North" thing, a calling card in visiting buildings from Jets fans: yes, the Jets players hear you. And yeah, they think it’s pretty cool.
"It lets us know Jets fans are in the building. And it’s unique — no other team has that," Jets defenceman Ben Chiarot said Tuesday. "Yeah, we hear it. And in some buildings, it’s really loud."
Those loud buildings include the one in B.C., a province that is home to huge swaths of former Winnipeggers — retired and otherwise — who have long taken advantage of Jets visits to the Lower Mainland to head out to Rogers Arena and cheer on their "home" team.
Vancouver could use all the box office help it can get right now. The Canucks are a bit of a tire fire this season, with an aging and slow lineup, and the locals have grown increasingly indifferent judging by the numbers of empty seats visible at Rogers Arena for Vancouver’s last home game, Sunday against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Two home games against the Jets this week with Rogers Arena full of Winnipeggers might not be great for the psyche of the Canucks players, but it certainly won’t hurt the team’s bottom line.
The question still to be answered, however, is whether there will come a time when the Jets can draw fans in visiting cities who aren’t former or current Winnipeggers.
With budding superstars such as Patrik Laine and Mark Scheifele, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility the Jets at some point become like the Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s: an otherwise obscure Canadian team you desperately want to see play live because of its star power.
That prospect might look a long way off with the Jets mired around .500, but then who’d have guessed a year ago the Jets would now have an 18-year-old rookie who is third in the NHL in goals and the third-leading vote-getter in the Central Division in all-star balloting?
It’s all pieces towards the building of what team owner True North Sports & Entertainment Ltd. hopes will eventually become a unique "Jets brand" that extends its appeal well beyond the Perimeter Highway — one part vintage Oilers, one part current Blackhawks, with a splash of the small-market miracle that is the NFL’s Green Bay Packers.
Or, as a Jets staffer likened it for me this week: "Not trying to be Pepsi or Coke. Just trying to be the best Dr. Pepper we can be."
paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca
