Image via WikipediaThere seems to be a buzz around the "Internet" that the Atlanta Thrashers are going to be moving to Winnipeg, I know we have seen and heard this story before but this time it sounds like this might actually be true. Of course Gary Bettman denies that there is a deal in place to sell the Thrashers to True North, which would in turn relocate the team from Atlanta to Winnipeg, Manitoba. Here is the link to the interview that was on Sports Radio 1290 A.M. CFRW out of Winnipeg, Manitoba. [Click to listen]
Stephen Brunt; Globe and Mail ---- An agreement to sell the National Hockey League’s Atlanta Thrashers to a Winnipeg group which plans to relocate the franchise to the Manitoba capital is done.
Sources confirmed tonight that preparations are being made for an announcement Tuesday, confirming the sale and transfer of the Thrashers to True North Sports and Entertainment, which owns and operates the Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League and the MTS Centre arena, which would become the NHL team’s new home.
Gary Bettman, the commissioner of the National Hockey League, is expected to travel to Winnipeg to make the news official.
The announcement would end months of speculation about whether one of the NHL’s financially-troubled American sunbelt teams might move north, filling the void left when the Winnipeg Jets packed up and left for Phoenix in 1996, where they became the Coyotes.
Much of the talk this spring had centred on that failing franchise, which was bought by the league after being placed in bankruptcy by its former owner Jerry Moyes in 2009.
But sources in Winnipeg suggest that the Thrashers had in fact been the primary target of potential owners Mark Chipman and David Thomson all along, and that some months back, the NHL board of governors quietly approved the sale and transfer of the team, pending the negotiation of a purchase agreement between Atlanta Spirit LLC, the Thrashers’ owners, and True North.
In the meantime, no potential owner materialized who was prepared to keep the team in Georgia, and local governments there showed no interest in propping up the Thrashers.
“There seems to be a consensus there is going to be a team in Winnpeg,” former major league pitcher Tom Glavine, who had tried unsuccessfully to find new ownership for the hockey team in Atlanta, acknowledged last week. ““The question is who, and unfortunately the bullseye seems to be on the Thrashers’ back.”
