True North Unveils Latest Round of Arena Renovations
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Winnipeg Free Press https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/columnists/true-north-unveils-latest-round-of-arena- renovations-445549083.html True North unveils latest round of arena renovations By: Paul Wiecek There’s new floors, new ceilings, new lights, new signage, new concessions and a new aviation theme full of steel, rivets and glass. Throw in a new name — Bell MTS Place — and a new NHL season that kicked off Monday night with the Winnipeg Jets hosting the Minnesota Wild in their pre-season opener and what was old looked sparkling new again as hockey came back to town. But in the bigger picture of things, perhaps the freshest thing of all was that the overwhelming majority of the $14 million price tag for the latest renovations was paid, as it should be, by True North Sports and Entertainment. Now, that’s nothing new for True North, which deserves credit for having mostly paid their own way when it comes to the arena since Day 1, at least when compared to the sweetheart arena and stadium deals other pro sports teams have cut with their local governments — including, of course, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. While the Jets receive an ongoing property tax break on the arena and other annual public subsidies from government that they negotiated when the team first moved here from Atlanta, just $40 million of the original $133.5 million price tag of the downtown arena was public money and True North has continued to mostly pay their own way ever since. Indeed, with the latest round of renovations, True North has now coughed up something in the order of about $30 million in the last three years renovating and revitalizing the home of the Jets. And they’ve spent that money well: a new scoreboard a couple years ago was badly needed; seating was made more comfortable and sightlines, with a few notable exceptions, improved; and with the latest round of renovations, the whole place has just generally been brought closer to the high standards people quite rightly expect when they plunk down more than a hundred bucks to see an entertainment event. In a normal world, of course, this would hardly be noteworthy — ‘Local business pays own bills’ isn’t exactly a ‘Stop the presses!’ headline. But we don’t live in a normal world. We live in a world in which wealthy owners of sports teams routinely hold their host cities hostage, demanding the local citizenry build or renovate them shiny new sports palaces, or else. The latest shameful example of billionaire sports team owners demanding public welfare came just last week in Calgary, where the owners of the Flames called a news conference — with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman in tow — to announce they had given up on negotiations with the City of Calgary to build the Flames a new arena, with Flames president Ken King calling the talks "spectacularly unproductive." It was a cynical ploy: the Flames were clearly hoping the announcement — and the presence of a sombre looking Bettman — would frighten Flames fans and make bankrolling a new arena for the Flames an election issue in a civic campaign, not coincidentally, currently underway in Calgary. But that plan appears to have backfired just as "spectacularly" as the Flames say their talks with the city were unproductive, mostly because the City of Calgary has the facts on their side. And what those facts reveal — which Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi was only too happy to share following the Flames' tantrum — is that the City of Calgary has offered to pay one-third of the cost of a new arena ($185 million of an estimated $555-million project) provided the Flames ownership also agree to pay one-third, with the rest coming from Flames fans in the form of a ticket levy. That seems more than fair to me — fans, owners and a city all coming together to finance something from which they will all benefit in their own way. And, it bears repeating, it is also a deal that is infinitely richer than this city and province ever offered Mark Chipman back in the days he had to go all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada just to earn the right to tear down the derelict Eaton’s building upon the site that now hosts NHL hockey in Winnipeg. It is a monument to just how divorced from the fiscal reality of $50-a-barrel oil the Flames ownership is that they dismissed as a non-starter an offer of close to $200 million in public money for a new arena. At least the Edmonton Oilers had the decency — and common sense — to hold the City of Edmonton hostage for a ridiculously pricey new arena deal of their own back when oil was hovering closer to $100 a barrel. All of which brings us back to the modest, mostly self-financed arena the Jets call home. It’s the smallest building in the NHL and even with the renovations, it lacks the sizzle you see in other NHL arenas around the league. But it is unquestionably a better place to watch hockey today than it was before the renovations began and it’s a place that fits the small-market economic model the Jets are trying to operate a hockey team within. If and when this team finally turns a corner and becomes a legitimate contender — and expectations have never been higher than the season that began Monday night — it will be at least in part thanks to the construction of a modest arena that remains affordable, both for the the Jets ownership and this province’s taxpayers. In a city that loves a bargain, our humble little downtown arena might be the best one of all. https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/sports/hockey/jets/jets-drop-pre-season-opener-to-wild-3-2- in-a-shootout-445558343.html Jets drop pre-season opener to Wild 3-2 in a shootout By: Jason Bell No pink slips were handed out Monday night at the downtown home of the Winnipeg Jets, but no major promotions were dispensed, either. The sun rose this morning and the same personnel from Winnipeg’s two training camp groups that skated Saturday and Sunday will resume its regularly scheduled programming at Bell MTS Iceplex. A 3-2 shootout defeat to a Minnesota Wild squad thin on NHL regulars meant squat in Jets head coach Paul Maurice’s grand scheme of things. Mostly, it sent hockey-starved fans streaming out the Bell MTS Place doors a bit displeased. Indeed, the ticket stub from Winnipeg’s first of seven pre-season tests prior to the 2017-18 NHL regular season wasn’t worth saving for the scrapbook. Ryan Malone, 37, trying to resurrect his career with the Wild, netted the only goal of the shootout with a low shot that beat goalie Connor Hellebuyck. The Jets top line of Mark Scheifele, Blake Wheeler and Patrik Laine were all tapped to break in on Minnesota goalie Steve Michalek in the shootout but were stopped cold. Seventeen minor penalties annihilated the flow of an exhibition game that, if history has taught us anything, might not have had much, anyway. Maurice purposely went with a roster chockfull of guys who already cash hefty cheques, looking for signs the players he knows and trusts are already fully invested in the plan to dramatically improve from a non-playoff team to a legitimate Central Division post-season challenger. Minnesota coach Bruce Boudreau, meanwhile, was on an entirely different fact-finding mission, travelling north of the border with a group of youngsters and just a few recognizable names, like centre Charlie Coyle, who had a career-high 52 points last season, and right-winger Chris Stewart, along with forwards Marcus Foligno and Tyler Ennis, acquired in late June from Buffalo. Left at home were players who usually give the Jets fits such as forwards Nino Niederreiter, Jason Zucker and Mikael Granlund, blue-liner Ryan Suter and goalie Devan Dubnyk. Collectively, Jets didn’t exactly dominate the humdrum affair, interrupted repeatedly by the penalty calls of referees Cameron Voss and Chris Lee. Maurice had said Monday morning he fully anticipated a parade to the box – and he called it right. "Thirty-three minutes of five-on-five hockey? We know that going in. It was true to form of all the other games with really, really high penalty totals," he said. "We had a big group of veteran guys and we’re just slowly starting to work them into the power play and touching the puck." Winnipeg's power play was two-for-10 on the night, as Mathieu Perreault scored just 45 seconds into the game, while Laine's rocket one-timer tied the game 2-2 late in the second period. "Not a lot of legs in our group and not a lot of speed to our game and you just got to get your hands moving testing some pucks. We got those guys with almost 10 minutes of power-play time. Some of it looked nice, some of it looked like it was the first exhibition game," Maurice said. "In terms of evaluation, you’re just looking at the guys who are playing their first exhibition game, see how you felt they went. There wouldn’t be a whole lot of evaluation for that one." There were a few moments worth noting. Perreault flashed his sneaky side, walking in from the corner, stepping in from and stuffing the puck past Wild goalie Niklas Svedberg, who played two periods before giving way to Michalek.