(…)if not for the Winnipeg Jets, hockey as we know it might never have existed. It was Hockey Canada – founded in the River City in the 60s – that first invited the Russians, and the rest of the Eastern bloc, to compete in Manitoba, and it was the WHA Jets who first signed Europeans to play for their team, creating an open and free game – the kind of game that still gives us pause, that renews our trust in the beauty and grace and power of the sport. But in 1996, it wasn’t enough. The league – and the league’s young commissioner, Gary Bettman – overlooked these contributions, allowing the Jets to move to Phoenix.
