Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Marketing failure - Report: If NHL returns to Winnipeg, team won’t be named Winnipeg Jets

63839_quebec_nordiques

While we don’t know if the NHL is going to make a return to Winnipeg, the speculation of how things will go with the return of the Winnipeg Jets has been well underway for the last few years thanks to the ongoing saga of the Phoenix Coyotes. Lots of NHL fans are nostalgic for those days in the 1980s and 1990s when trips to Winnipeg meant seeing Keith Tkachuk or Teemu Selanne and the Jets taking the ice clad in white, blue, and red swelling with pride for the city.

As things go when people with money and big ideas for marketing get involved, some of the ad wizards in Manitoba, Canada think it would be a great idea when/if the NHL returns to Winnipeg that the team not be known by that clunky old name that everyone outside of Arizona loves and adores.

Dave Wheeler of the Winnipeg Sun tells us that if NHL hockey is to be played again in Winnipeg, they won’t be calling the team the Winnipeg Jets.

I have it under good authority, that a name, jersey scheme, and logo have already been designed and are ready to go for when the team makes our city its home.

The bad news for some fans — it will not be the Jets. From what I do know, the team will go under the moniker of the Manitoba (TBA).

Making it a provincial team makes financial sense for corporate support, bringing in more dollars from outside the city. Same idea as the Saskatchewan Roughriders, who would have nearly as much support if they were the Regina Roughriders. I have heard some names bounced around the rumour mill, but nothing has been confirmed.


Financial and corporate sense at the local level, perhaps but if this proved to be true at all, the good folks coming up with these ideas in Manitoba might want to step outside of the fishbowl and take a look around. The situation in Phoenix has the added allure for fans because many people were opposed to taking away the Jets in the first place.

Jets merchandise is still sold and marketed by the NHL now and remains very popular thanks to the warm feelings people have from seeing Selanne score 76 goals his rookie season or from growing up playing video games emblazoned with Jets logo and players to make use of. Coming up with a more generic and marketing-wizard type of nickname for the team, while drawing attention to the province of Manitoba rather than the city of Winnipeg, smacks of being a bogus grab to sell and push more merchandise.

Perhaps we’ve found out where the brains behind the Islanders switching from their traditional logo to the infamous “fisherman” have disappeared to. After all, if you want to ruin the support you might get for bringing a team back to Winnipeg saying you won’t go back to the old name is a pretty good way to do it.

Supporting an idea that hearkens back to something you grew up with does wonders to make people feel good about making it happen. Changing that up and making it abundantly corporate from top to bottom under the guise of trying to make it your own new thing is cold, calculating, and worst of all boring. If we’re going to get hockey back to Winnipeg, make it something that’s lovable and worth rallying around. If it’s the Coyotes that are going end up back there, that’s the best sort of PR you could ask for.