To Manitoba go the Moose: Jets announce their new AHL afilliate
The St. Johns IceCaps are on the move.
The Winnipeg Jets have announced that their new AHL affiliate will reside locally in Manitoba, and will go by the historically famed name, the Manitoba Moose. “We threw around a bunch of names like we did with the Jets’ name” True North Sports boss Mark Chipman said at a news conference on Monday, “But we kept coming back to it. That’s 15 years of history, which for us is a long time…and we’re very proud of that name.”
This will mark the third separate team that has elected to use the Manitoba Moose name to coin their franchise. The first team stretched from 1996-2001 as part of the now-defunct International Hockey League (IHL), and again in the American Hockey League (AHL) from 2001-2011 serving as the minor league affiliate for the Vancouver Canucks.
The Jets’ franchise will benefit immensely from the locality of the Moose, as they will no longer have to wait extended periods of time for injury replacements to join the team. However, ironically enough, the only reason the Moose are set to call Manitoba home is due to two different mistakes:
1) The Jets tried and failed to land a WHL team
2) The Jets were originally attempting to move their AHL affiliate to Thunder Bay, but were unable to work out a plan for a new arena in that area.
So to Manitoba go the Moose, and despite the projected low ticket prices ($15-25) and an anticipated average attendance rate of 7,000 fans, Chipman insists that, “this is not really a business move as much as it is a hockey move for our organization.”
We saw how the city of Winnipeg rallied around the Jets during their recent postseason series against the Ducks, and with the Moose moving home, it looks like the once hockey-starved city of Winnipeg will finally have plenty to cheer about.
