Thin Ice: Money, Politics, and the Demise of an NHL Franchise

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

According to Jim Silver, skating on financially thin ice is precisely
what the Winnipeg Jets hockey team did from the moment it came to
Winnipeg in 1972 as part of the World Hockey Association until it left
in 1997 to become the National Hockey League’s Phoenix Coyotes. But
“thin ice” has another meaning in the context of this book. In 1993,
Silver, a University of Winnipeg political science professor, joined
Thin Ice, a small working group that had spun off from Choices, a
Winnipeg-based social justice coalition formed in 1991. Thin Ice and
Choices wanted the Jets to remain in Winnipeg, but their support did not
extend to the expenditure of massive amounts of public funds on the Jets
at a time when social services were being reduced, especially given that
these Jet-directed monies would ultimately wind up in the pockets of the
already well-to-do. Thin Ice became virtually the only voice to publicly
question and challenge the plans of Winnipeg’s financial elite to
“save” the Jets by dipping into the public purse.

The opening chapter of this analysis of the Jets “saga” makes a
persuasive argument that professional hockey is and always has been a
business run by a wealthy, largely American oligarchy. The remaining six
chapters chronicle the Jets’ troubled financial history and the
efforts by the team’s various owners over the years to minimize their
own financial risk by accessing the national, provincial, or city
coffers via threats of moving the team elsewhere.

Engagingly written and well-documented, this book will be of interest
to all fans of professional sports. Highly recommended.