How about our owner Barry Shenkarow didn’t own the arena. He received 0$ in concessions or in parking. The arena had only a couple of luxury boxes. He received gate revenue only. Salaries started to climb drastically at that time and the Canadian dollar was at .60 cents. We needed a new arena and our government wasn’t willing to foot the bill. Those are just a few things. The politics of the league and wanting to expand to large, non traditional hockey markets had a lot of play in that too, don’t kid yourself. And as far as our attendance goes, 12,500 was the league average for years, with much larger buildings. Our arena was retrofitted in ‘79 when we joined the league. 2,500 of those 15,000 seats were extremely obstructed views. I remember sitting in seats in one of the upper balconies and could only see 1/4 of the ice lol. We had 19” dusty monitors to catch the action. To be honest, Winnipeg simply couldn’t afford an NHL franchise at the time. Everything is different now. Revenue sharing, dollar parody put in place, a salary cap, our owner owns the arena and a bunch of venues around the building. The Jets kinda needed to leave so that Winnipeg could get its **** together. Saying that the team left because we the fans didn’t suppport the team is simply untrue and obviously just a way of trolling. Unless it’s coming from a new fan to hockey. If so, I’ll give you a decade or so to learn the game and it’s history, before I even consider entertaining your opinion.
