The Winnipeg Jets are about to begin their inaugural (again) season in the NHL. The Jets were a well known quantity in the WHA then NHL for 24 seasons (from 1972-1996), making the fact that they’re back the biggest news in hockey this year. And it occurs to me their rebirth is a convenient vehicle for addressing a couple of problems in the wide world of sports.
Over on the New Yorker blog, Adam Gopnik pays some analytic attention to the phenomenon of the throwback jersey. (A throwback jersey refers to the jerseys a team wears when they decide to wear uniforms of a style or design that the team used to wear as its official uniform. Like vintage shopping, it’s wearing an old design of clothing for specifically that reason.) Before Gopnik goes happily and tangentially into a discussion about the names of his son and dog, he makes a confession about the sheer joy it brings him to see professional sports teams wearing an older style of jersey, a jersey that belongs to the team’s history.
The Montreal Canadians and the Pittsburgh Steelers are two teams that do this well, with vintage uniforms that they can wear on special occasions, and which bear witness to the historical roots of both the team and city they represent. But maybe, in Gopnik’s nostalgic and almost etymological glory, he’s too quick to limit the scope of the throwback jersey to a mere reminder of a time gone by. Maybe wearing a throwback jersey could symbolize something more than just what it is to the city and the team. Maybe it could be something that resonates with NHL hockey as it’s played today.
Now, I’m not saying the new Jets uniforms are ugly. (Ed. note: I am!) But I’m already thinking of a game-changing way the Winnipeg Jets can use their old, retro jerseys. At some point they’re going to get a chance to wear throwback jerseys featuring the original Jets design. The Leafs, the Habs, they’ve got plenty of retro jerseys, the Jets will get to play along as well. But permit me to furnish just one more bit of context before I get to my, I have to say, very original idea.
When commentators or concerned fans suggest there’s a problem with hockey, or problems, it’s part of what every sport goes through. Sometimes that’s what changes a sport, or helps it to change. Sometimes not. But any sport’s professional league, at various moments in its history, will have those existential moments in which fans are forced to question their loyalty, or critics will point out how the sport’s very future depends on fixing some wrinkle. It might be a rule that just doesn’t work anymore, because of the way it’s being taken advantage of. It might be a new rule that needs to be implemented to keep the game fair. Recently Roy MacGregor wrote in the Globe and Mail about one of these frustrations with the state of the game of hockey. He calls it the problem of the fourth line.
The fourth line on an NHL hockey team is there almost exclusively to fight, and the heart of the problem there, as MacGregor articulates, is that often what happens is the fourth line ends up fighting with the fourth line of the opposing team. So a surplus of fights takes place that would be hard to argue have anything to do with the rest of the game. Get rid of the fourth line,MacGregor urges, for the sake of better hockey, hockey how it used to be played without the posturing. Hockey shouldn’t be about fights between guys who are each just trying to hold onto their spot on a roster.
And so the idea: let the occasions on which the Winnipeg Jets wear their old uniforms also mark a stance against this ‘fourth line’ hockey. The Jets could suit up only three lines when they’re in the vintage wear, and thereby be taking a stand for the cleaner, faster hockey of a different age. Maybe this would remind the league of the kind of sport it once had. But for everyone who likes the game exactly as it is, well don’t worry. When those regular uniforms are on, it’s business as usual in 2011’s NHL.
We have a different kind of situation here in Toronto. As the Maple Leafs are getting ready to start their season, it’s the Blue Jays who are revamping their look to match more of a vintage style.
With the injection of new young talent and the identity of a team nucleus confidently emerging, it’s starting to feel like the Jays are a team to be reckoned with, a team that can compete for a championship. If it’s not going to happen next season, well then it’s got to be the season after that. It feels soon.
The Maple Leafs, however, have got to produce. They don’t have too much in the way of momentum. The carryover from the end of last season notwithstanding, a team still has to start every season back at the beginning, on the starting blocks. And there are quite a few seasons of that special disappointment called ‘playofflessness’ (well known to Leafs fans). But frustration and excitement become quickly mingled. So it’s sort of apt to both herald the new playoff-bound era of the Toronto Maple Leafs and denounce the desperate folly that would lead a Leafs fan to have any hope at all, at the top of your lungs and even at the very same time.
Maybe the answer is staring us right in the face. The Maple Leafs should have designated nights when they wear the brand new Toronto Blue Jays uniforms. For the sake of that hopeful momentum. Anyway, welcome back Winnipeg.
