Post by jetsorbust on Oct 6, 2011 13:11:06 GMT -6
www.winnipegsun.com/2011/10/06/chipman-a-dream-come-true-for-jets-fans
It started off with a $3-million investment, give or take, in a minor-league hockey team that excited Winnipeggers like the early arrival of winter.
Little did Mark Chipman know writing that cheque 15 years ago for 50% ownership of the Minnesota Moose, a team with little history playing in something called the International Hockey League, would lead to this.
“I’d be dishonest to say I had that picture in my mind,” Chipman, the head of True North Sports and Entertainment and its prized acquisition, the Winnipeg Jets NHL franchise, told the Sun. “We were fresh off the effort to keep the team (the original Jets) here. So obviously we thought about the hope and possibility to bring the league back some day.
“But we were more just consumed by the overwhelming nature of what we were going through. Just to get another team up and running.”
Up and stumbling, might be more like it.
The first season of the Manitoba Moose, 1996-97, was a disaster, marked by a midseason coaching change, dwindling crowds and a finish out of the playoffs.
It’s probably safe to say that introduction to minor-league hockey turned some fans off for good.
But instead of throwing up his hands and saying, “Hey, we tried,” Chipman kept at it, like a kid who does a face-plant the first time on skates, bloodies his nose but climbs back onto his ankles for more.
Perhaps a football analogy would be better, as the gridiron was Chipman’s choice of sport when, at 15, he realized he’d never be able to stickhandle his way past the AA level.
Not that he was a candidate for the pros as a receiver, either.
If his time at the University of North Dakota didn’t tell him that, then an invitation to Winnipeg Blue Bomber camp did.
“I was camp fodder,” Chipman recalled. “It was Tyrone Jones’s rookie year. I found myself on the wrong end of his abilities on more than one occasion.”
No lasting scars, though.
“Just emotional,” Chipman said, chuckling.
So a career as an athlete was out of the question.
Instead, Chipman dove into the family business, eventually finding himself elbow-to-elbow with the movers and shakers who were fighting, against the odds, to keep the Jets from moving south.
That overmatched Canadian was flattened by the American, too. Winnipeg’s NHL franchise was sold and shipped south, to Arizona.
Chipman insists nowhere along the way did he decide he wanted to become a sports owner.
It just happened.
“It was just one of those things that came up,” he said. “It was keeping hockey going.”
So he wrote that cheque and found himself in charge of a franchise that was losing on and off the ice.
Quickly learning to stickhandle his way around the boardroom, Chipman led the amalgamation of the IHL and AHL four years later, and suddenly minor-league hockey made a little more sense in Winnipeg.
“The amalgamation of the two leagues made it a very viable thing,” he said. “That allowed us to invest further in the (new) building. And the building then in turn put us in a position to bring the NHL back.”
By now you know that story, how NHL commissioner Gary Bettman lined up True North to be his Plan B in the event of the collapse of the Phoenix Coyotes, at the same time putting Chipman and billionaire partner David Thomson in touch with the owners of the Atlanta Thrashers.
On May 31, a whirlwind of backroom negotiations produced a deal that brought the Thrashers to Winnipeg. The cost: $180 million, or Chipman’s original hockey investment, 60 times over.
A decade and a half after Winnipeg dropped the ball, the slotback who wasn’t quite good enough has made a catch the whole country is talking about.
The action has been non-stop, since.
And Chipman has proved he’s learned a few things along the way. When he hires hockey people, for instance, he’ll trust his gut feeling, and the gut of those he trusts, more than a glitzy resume.
On Oct. 9, the NHL’s rookie owner hopes to take a moment to step back and savour the Jets first game, a visit by the storied Montreal Canadiens.
“I’m hoping I get to absorb it more than what I’ve experienced since the 31st of May,” he said. “Let it all sort of sink in.
GOT CHILLS JUST TALKING ABOUT STANLEY CUP
It was the night before the NHL Entry Draft, at a St. Paul, Minn., restaurant, when Mark Chipman witnessed the reason he’s in the hockey business.
Not far from the Winnipeg Jets contingent was the one representing the Boston Bruins.
“And the Cup came in,” Chipman recalled. “So you see the effect it had on that group. Not just on ownership, but on the entire organization. The sense of pride that was shared.
“What was really remarkable, a lot of other teams were in the same building, and they were cheering. The business of hockey is like a family. We compete like warriors on the ice, but off the ice it’s a family.”
And, yes, this proud papa, with his new baby about to take its first steps into the NHL world, has allowed himself to dream about being on the receiving end of those cheers.
And when he does, he gets feelings that are normally only obtained through chemical means.
“I just got them now, as you asked me that question,” Chipman said. “You get that chill. The thought of winning the Stanley Cup, it’s a chill. That’s the ultimate objective. I don’t know that we’ll achieve it. But we’re sure going to try.”
As much as we all hate Bettman (
) I think we can also agree that our love for this man is 1000 times stronger!
It started off with a $3-million investment, give or take, in a minor-league hockey team that excited Winnipeggers like the early arrival of winter.
Little did Mark Chipman know writing that cheque 15 years ago for 50% ownership of the Minnesota Moose, a team with little history playing in something called the International Hockey League, would lead to this.
“I’d be dishonest to say I had that picture in my mind,” Chipman, the head of True North Sports and Entertainment and its prized acquisition, the Winnipeg Jets NHL franchise, told the Sun. “We were fresh off the effort to keep the team (the original Jets) here. So obviously we thought about the hope and possibility to bring the league back some day.
“But we were more just consumed by the overwhelming nature of what we were going through. Just to get another team up and running.”
Up and stumbling, might be more like it.
The first season of the Manitoba Moose, 1996-97, was a disaster, marked by a midseason coaching change, dwindling crowds and a finish out of the playoffs.
It’s probably safe to say that introduction to minor-league hockey turned some fans off for good.
But instead of throwing up his hands and saying, “Hey, we tried,” Chipman kept at it, like a kid who does a face-plant the first time on skates, bloodies his nose but climbs back onto his ankles for more.
Perhaps a football analogy would be better, as the gridiron was Chipman’s choice of sport when, at 15, he realized he’d never be able to stickhandle his way past the AA level.
Not that he was a candidate for the pros as a receiver, either.
If his time at the University of North Dakota didn’t tell him that, then an invitation to Winnipeg Blue Bomber camp did.
“I was camp fodder,” Chipman recalled. “It was Tyrone Jones’s rookie year. I found myself on the wrong end of his abilities on more than one occasion.”
No lasting scars, though.
“Just emotional,” Chipman said, chuckling.
So a career as an athlete was out of the question.
Instead, Chipman dove into the family business, eventually finding himself elbow-to-elbow with the movers and shakers who were fighting, against the odds, to keep the Jets from moving south.
That overmatched Canadian was flattened by the American, too. Winnipeg’s NHL franchise was sold and shipped south, to Arizona.
Chipman insists nowhere along the way did he decide he wanted to become a sports owner.
It just happened.
“It was just one of those things that came up,” he said. “It was keeping hockey going.”
So he wrote that cheque and found himself in charge of a franchise that was losing on and off the ice.
Quickly learning to stickhandle his way around the boardroom, Chipman led the amalgamation of the IHL and AHL four years later, and suddenly minor-league hockey made a little more sense in Winnipeg.
“The amalgamation of the two leagues made it a very viable thing,” he said. “That allowed us to invest further in the (new) building. And the building then in turn put us in a position to bring the NHL back.”
By now you know that story, how NHL commissioner Gary Bettman lined up True North to be his Plan B in the event of the collapse of the Phoenix Coyotes, at the same time putting Chipman and billionaire partner David Thomson in touch with the owners of the Atlanta Thrashers.
On May 31, a whirlwind of backroom negotiations produced a deal that brought the Thrashers to Winnipeg. The cost: $180 million, or Chipman’s original hockey investment, 60 times over.
A decade and a half after Winnipeg dropped the ball, the slotback who wasn’t quite good enough has made a catch the whole country is talking about.
The action has been non-stop, since.
And Chipman has proved he’s learned a few things along the way. When he hires hockey people, for instance, he’ll trust his gut feeling, and the gut of those he trusts, more than a glitzy resume.
On Oct. 9, the NHL’s rookie owner hopes to take a moment to step back and savour the Jets first game, a visit by the storied Montreal Canadiens.
“I’m hoping I get to absorb it more than what I’ve experienced since the 31st of May,” he said. “Let it all sort of sink in.
GOT CHILLS JUST TALKING ABOUT STANLEY CUP
It was the night before the NHL Entry Draft, at a St. Paul, Minn., restaurant, when Mark Chipman witnessed the reason he’s in the hockey business.
Not far from the Winnipeg Jets contingent was the one representing the Boston Bruins.
“And the Cup came in,” Chipman recalled. “So you see the effect it had on that group. Not just on ownership, but on the entire organization. The sense of pride that was shared.
“What was really remarkable, a lot of other teams were in the same building, and they were cheering. The business of hockey is like a family. We compete like warriors on the ice, but off the ice it’s a family.”
And, yes, this proud papa, with his new baby about to take its first steps into the NHL world, has allowed himself to dream about being on the receiving end of those cheers.
And when he does, he gets feelings that are normally only obtained through chemical means.
“I just got them now, as you asked me that question,” Chipman said. “You get that chill. The thought of winning the Stanley Cup, it’s a chill. That’s the ultimate objective. I don’t know that we’ll achieve it. But we’re sure going to try.”
As much as we all hate Bettman (
) I think we can also agree that our love for this man is 1000 times stronger!
