Former Atlanta Thrashers captain Bobby Holik joined the litany of current and former teammates to defend fans for the team’s all-but-certain demise.
Like most other players, Holik – who was never afraid to say whatever was on his mind in the Atlanta locker room – blasted Thrashers ownership.
“Did hockey get a fair chance? That’s kind of a broad question,” Holik told Tom Gulitti’s Fire and Ice Blog. “Yes, from the players and the fans. Not from the management or the ownership.”
Holik, who finished with 41 goals and 55 helpers in three seasons with Atlanta’s soon-to-be departed hockey team enjoyed his time in the metropolitan area of 5.5 million people that was abandoned by terrible ownership and an uncaring commissioner whose covenant with fans did not encompass the eighth largest television market in the United States.
“I loved it (in Atlanta),” Holik said. “I wish I had more time there. I absolutely loved it. My family loved it. It’s a little sad to see this happening, but you know what? It was inevitable.”
Of course, Atlanta would be a favorite to some hockey players. The weather is warm. The city is diverse and there is some semblance of anonymity for most players in a town that is more about college football than hockey.
But that’s not to say that Atlanta is a bad hockey town. It could be a very good town, if the Thrashers ever showed any semblance of sustained promise.
They never really did.
The Thrashers drew over 16,000 fans per game and had 11 sellouts in 2006-07, the only season they made the playoffs. They outdrew the Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks and the New Jersey Devils that season. But the Thrashers were swept out of the first round of the playoffs by the New York Rangers and never made it back to the postseason.
Holik understands that it takes winning to draw fans to the rink. He also understands the importance of having good ownership that avoids unnecessary infighting. The Atlanta Spirit provided neither of those two important elements for the Thrashers franchise.
“I understand it was an expansion franchise, but eventually, even before the Atlanta Spirit ownership, you have to have some kind of results,” Holik said. “You have to have some kind of direction and it was just getting there, just getting there because they weren’t there yet, when this ownership took over and the legal problems, the fighting, the disagreements started that basically sealed the deal that hockey will not be successful there.
“Initially, I think it was not managed properly, but when they did finally get on the right track as far as management of the team, this ownership completely derailed that effort and the rest is history.”
Ownerships’ legal wrangling had a direct impact on the ice product. As Holik points out, when the Spirit fired coach Bob Hartley after the club started the 2007-08 season 0-6, they had then-GM Don Waddell act as coach for the rest of the year in what Holik considers to be a cost-cutting move.
“After my second year, we finally made the playoffs and we didn’t win a round, they should have changed the coach right there and then,” Holik said, referring to Bob Hartley. “They didn’t because he was under contract and they didn’t want to pay somebody who was not working and have to get another coach.”
Of course, that same cheapness also began to invade the on-ice product.
“Players like Greg de Vries, who was a much-needed, much-respected and liked teammate, he was one of the most important players on that team and they couldn’t re-sign him because they signed Ken Klee instead for just a little less because they were cutting, cutting, cutting,” Holik said.
“You need to re-sign a player, but you cannot because you have to get somebody who is not on the team, who doesn’t know the system and doesn’t know the team and who is less of a player. So, ownership decisions or disagreements directly affect your performance on the ice regardless on what they tell you.”
When the final obituary is written by those of us not in Canada, the narrative is looking like it is clear. The combination of an uncaring Commissioner who had $40 to $60 million reasons to make a quick deal with the opportunistic True North Sports and Entertainment in Winnipeg, combined with inept, incompetent penny-pinching ownership that really didn’t want to part with its basketball team, caused the Thrashers to move to a city North of the border that’s 1/7th the size of Atlanta.
It’s all because a shameful Bettman decided that it was more important to go for the quick buck – in this case $40 to $60 million from True North in the form of a “relocation” or “break up” fee – rather than patiently waiting for a true market to develop for the Thrashers like he did in Nashville and Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay and Edmonton and Phoenix before Atlanta.
Kids around Atlanta and Thrashers co-owner Michael Gearon, Jr. cried this week, while all Bettman and Thrashers owner co-owner Bruce Levenson did was cry all the way to the bank in a shameful display of backroom dealing and politics that took Atlanta’s hockey team away before the city and the team's fans ever had a chance.
But what do you expect from a commissioner of a league whose U.S. television rights fees are dwarfed by NASCAR?
Yes, folks, only the wanna-be major league NHL would abandon the eighth largest television market in the country and look at it as a growth opportunity.
There’s a reason why the MLS is gaining on you, Bettman. Think about that and get back to me.
Oh wait, I am Atlanta-based. You don’t talk to us anymore. You haven’t since this charade of a sale process began in early May.
Enjoy Winnipeg! As @catherpegl suggested, I hope you get a ratings bonanza of an Edmonton Oilers – Winnipeg Jets Stanley Cup Finals next year. But then again, it will serve Bettman right. He’s no different than the Atlanta Spirit – penny-wise and pound foolish.
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