The Winnipeg Jets

I've written a few posts about Hockey on this blog. Usually, it's some lamentation about how the team I'm cheering for won't make it past their opponents in an effort to lessen the blow should my team actually lose. It's so far 1 for 2 in that category (Canada won Gold but Vancouver lost game 7).

Rather than do a post on that, I wanted to reminisce about how I started watching hockey in the first place.

Unlike most Canadian kids, I was never an avid hockey fan. I couldn't tell Mario Lemieux apart from Claude and the only hockey player I knew was Wayne Gretsky (that's only because Canada makes such a big deal out of him). I never got to play a game on a frozen pond lake because I never learned to skate.

I do remember very vividly how in the winter of 2002, my teachers huddled about four classes together to watch a broadcast of the Olympic Hockey game in Salt Lake City. This was the first game I ever watched, and it was something special, but we didn't watch the full game though, just enough. I don't remember the score or if it was a medal game or the round robin portion of the tournament.

But beyond this one little hockey game, I didn't watch any sport in regularity. I have always been one of those people that believed playing sports was far better and far more fun than watching an actual game. Of course, I didn't play much of anything. It was just a lazy kid's sad attempt of lowering the status of spectator sports (that being said, I do enjoy a good game of floor hockey, that was the only thing I ever looked forward to in gym class). I didn't watch hockey at all after the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Not until the Winter Olympics of 2010.

2010 was something special to watch because the Olympic games took place in my home city. Despite never having been a close follower of Olympic sport, I had to tune in to this particular one. It was home soil, it was a chance to witness Canadian history. As a country, we haven't won gold on home soil since... ever. We had two prior chances, the 1976 summer games of Montreal and the 1988 winter games of Calgary, both yielding no gold medals.

Would this be our chance? Like every other Canadian, the one medal we actually cared about winning gold in was in Men's Ice Hockey. There was a saying that we would've traded all the gold we won just to guarantee we Hockey Gold. We didn't go through a particularly strong start, losing to the United States in the Round Robin portion of the tournament in a very deciding 3-5 lost. But the team bounced back, eliminating Russia, edging out Slovakia and finally meeting the United States, playing for gold. The game was a harrowing battle, Team Canada dominating play for the first two periods, scoring two goals. But Team U.S.A responded back with two goals of their own, tying the game up in the last few seconds of regulation play. This baby was going into overtime.


The thing is, suddenly, I found a way home. Every night that Vs. broadcasts a home game of the Vancouver Canucks, I get a little slice of the city I call home. The Winter games was the closest I came to feeling at home in a long time, not counting the yearly vacations back. The gold medal brought a sense of pride in me, that

But over the past few years, I've come to the realization of why sports matters. It's not just because it's something fun to watch but also because it brings people together.

Which brings me to the return of the Winnipeg Jets. Obviously, I had no prior knowledge of the team until very recently. I know for a fact that Winnipeg is a bit of a dustbowl with schizophrenic weather. But I never knew that there was once a hockey team in the city of my birthplace. To me, Winnipeg was always the middle of nowhere "city" that no one really cares about. It was generic, it was unspectacular, it was boring.

But the Jets were there. They gave this city a bit of flavour. The team was Winnipeg's statement that "we're not generic and unimportant. We are here". I was five at the time the Jet's relocated to Phoenix. I wasn't a hockey fan then, and I knew of no one that was. Strangely enough, I too relocated. Before moving permanently to Oakland in 2003, I once stayed in the city for six months when I was five.

My parents grew tired of Winnipeg, which in my family terms, meant my dad grew tired of Winnipeg. He was tired of all the house break ins and broken car windows in my neighborhood, but I suspect it wasn't the true reason. The city was too small.

When you blow through four different restaurants in the span of a year and a half as a cook, the list of restaurants you haven't worked in grow exponentially fewer. There weren't too many chinese restaurants in the city. So we packed our bags and moved to the states for six months.

After the visas expired, we relocated again. This time, to Vancouver. I grew up in that city and it is where I met some of my closest friends and where I still hold my most cherished memories. But living in Vancouver wasn't good enough. My dad wanted to live in the States and pursue his dreams of owning a restaurant that for some reason was unattainable in the city. After six years of living in the beautiful city of Vancouver, off we moved again, this time to Oakland, permanently.

To say that life in Oakland is decent would be a vast overstatement. It's not bad, but it's not great. I don't want to get into the many social and political problems that plague this city because this isn't what the post is about, but it's certainly amongst a few of my complains about living here. All I know is this, ever since I left my home country, nothing felt right in me. It was as though something very distinct about my identity was stripped away never to be seen again. I don't know if you could call it homesick. The word sick implies that you eventually recover from it, like a bad flu. I've been living here for a good eight years, and I still dream as though I never left my home.

When the 2010 Winter Olympics rolled around, I was reminded of the times when all of the sixth and seventh graders huddled around our little television to watch the games, specifically hockey. Being Canadian doesn't mean you have to like hockey, but you certainly appreciate how a simple little sport manages to bring people together.

Hockey instilled a sense of identity in me. I know it's superficial and very stereotypical for a Canadian. But the fact is, every time I watch a Canucks hockey game, I see a little bit of the city that I left. It's not much, but it's a sense of familiarity. Hockey has filled that hole for me, that sense of losing your identity.

When I learned about the Winnipeg Jets in all there history, I cheered for their return as well. Not only because I hailed from the town, but because they too have a history much like my own; unwillingly leaving a beloved home to an new and indifferent city.

When I heard that True North Sports and Entertainment purchased the Atlanta Thrashers team and subsequently renamed them the jets, I was elated that Winnipeg was getting their team back. They weren't the original, but I don't think the fans mind. I certainly don't. I suppose the fanbase regained a little bit of what they lost, and I get the benefit of feeling a little closer to home. I suspect that much of the identity of Winnipeggers have been lost in the 15 years of their absence, like something missing has suddenly been replaced in their return.

All I know is that I'll be watching closely.

Welcome back Jets. You should never have left.