Winningpeg

A wrong 15 years in the making has been righted. Hockey is returning to Winnipeg, Manitoba for the first time since 1996, when the Jets flew down to the desert and became the Phoenix Coyotes.

This is a great day for hockey, especially in Canada, as the move could open the door for future relocations to Quebec City or Hamilton, and perhaps even a second Toronto team.

It's a bad day to be a hockey fan down south, which is fine, because there aren't any anyways. But Czar Bettman certainly can't be happy to see a chink in his armor pertaining to hockey in the Sun Belt, a lavish experiment roughly 20 years in the making. Sure, there have been some success stories, in Dallas and Tampa Bay in particular, but between the departing Atlanta market, as well as some atrocities in Phoenix and South Florida, the clock is clearly ticking on pucks dropping too far below the Mason-Dixon Line.

Six full seasons removed from the lockout now, only once have the Thrashers/Coyotes/Panthers triumvirate finished in the top 20 in attendance league-wide (the Panthers clawed their way to 19 back in 2006). Combined, the teams have averaged a 25th-place finish in attendance since the lockout, with the Coyotes finishing 29th three of the past four seasons. The season they didn't finish 29th? A tidy 30th place finish, which of course is dead last in the NHL.

Obviously, it doesn't help matters that of 18 combined seasons between the teams, there have been just 3 post-season appearances. The Thrashers have contributed to one of those, back in 2007, where they were promptly swept by the New York Rangers. But to put in into perspective, during the 2010-2011 season, 5 of the 6 Canadian markets have 100% attendance or better for the season. This includes the Edmonton Oilers, owners of the worst record in the NHL. Even Ottawa, which finished with the 5th-worst, averaged 99.3% capacity this season. That's more than in Detroit (98.1). That's Hockeytown! Hockeytown, people!

The return of hockey to Winnipeg feels like a Led Zeppelin reunion tour. That would mean, of course, a Quebec City return would be The Who, while a new incarnation of the Hartford Whalers would be a Beatles comeback tour. And since the Oilers were a part of the same WHA expansion class as the Jets, Nordiques, and Whalers, they'd have to be the Rolling Stones, since the Stones have never officially broken up, unlike those other mammoth British acts. I'm not saying who between Gretzky and Messier would be Jagger and Richards, but Grant Fuhr would certainly be Charlie Watts.

So with Atlanta down, Phoenix is on the clock. They'll stay in the desert for one more lame-duck season, then move to "whiter" pastures in the Great White North. Quebec City, get that arena built.

That's Don Cherry right? You know he'll be pumped to host "Hockey Night in Canada" from the Manitoba capital again.