From Expansion to Extinction: Atlanta Thrashers (Ep. 19)

Welcome back to Misery Sports Co, the only organization fully committed to auditing fan suffering. Where we don’t measure wins and losses, we measure expectation, volatility and emotional return on investment. Hope remains a high risk asset. Disappointment remains a fixed income product. Trevor. Indeed. Good thing we don’t measure wins and losses. Thank you for joining us for another weekly review of our heartbreak. Uh, before we open the books, let’s hear a word from our exciting first sponsor. This next segment of the Misery Sports podcast is brought to you by the Double Rims at the Park. Thank you for making that shot. No, you’re not that bouncing twenty feet away. Doesn’t matter. Go ahead and hold the follow through. It’s not helping with double rims at the park. Hey, but when you hit that, that nothing but net shot and it goes in, just goes, don’t Yeah. Are you? You hear the chain rattle? I loved playing on chain nets. That was the best. Oh, yeah. Hard to find, but that’s so satisfying. Yeah, it feels good. Well, thank you for the sponsorship. It’s time now to open the books. Welcome to the weekly Performance Review. Here we evaluate execution, leadership, and late game decision making, along with overall emotional impact across the marketplace. Grades with assigned accountability is encouraged. Let’s open the books and begin this audit. Zach, I don’t have a lot this week, thank goodness, because there hasn’t been too much excitement out of my sports teams. The stars have been on a nice Olympic break. Shout out to the men. More to come on them later. Shout out good job men USA and women double gold. Let’s go! Two for two, baby. Two for two. Um, so that’s been good. Mavericks have been trash. We just. But we just snapped a ten game losing streak. Do you? Let’s go baby. The the Anthony Davis trade has just. I don’t know turned my brain into mush I feel insane now. So we I flipped on the game the other night or maybe highlights and we had like I’m watching Marvin Bagley I’m watching Khris Middleton watching a bunch of other scrubs I don’t know because a lot of our players are hurt including Cooper Flagg who’s in a walking boot. Like what is this team. What have they done. That’s NBA champion Khris Middleton. It is I listen I like Khris Middleton. But if you told me last January that I would be here watching Khris Middleton and Marvin Bagley on my team and honestly cheering on the losses because we need that draft spot. Yeah you know yeah Here we are. Looks like a good draft, though. I mean, there’s like three or four studs. It is deep. And if people decide that they’re out on the Kansas kid because he might not be all in with basketball. I’m here to tell you, we move up in the draft. I’m ready to take that flyer, baby. You don’t love basketball. Neither do I that much. But it’s fine. Just play a little bit. What else? Our money. Yeah. What can we. What can we give you? I don’t care. Um. And who else? Oh. Big news. Ozark. Guess what? This is a hallmark. If we if there was, like, a rule book or a playbook, a protocol, what have you for teams in Missouri sports Co, it would be every few years when morale is low. You know what time it is a Jersey rebrand. It’s time for new ones baby. So we are allegedly coming out with new jerseys here, uh, next month like mid-March. And we’re supposedly going to the baby Blues, um, from the Oilers for the Titans primary. That’s going to be our primary remains to be seen what the rest of it looks like. But there’s nothing like it, man. Just like forget the on field product. Check out the shiny new jerseys who unless you’re the Cleveland Browns and you get into a partnership with Nike and it becomes the worst jerseys of like the twenty tens, do you remember that? We were like Oregon but horrible. I it was exciting that they were trying things. But was that the one where like it was the word browns in a weird font? Yes, it was weird fonts they like highlighted it and it was like shadows on the jerseys. And they had different combinations and they’re like, oh, it’s going to be brown, brown on top and orange pants. All this stuff was like, dude, we’re zero and sixteen. No one cares. Thanks for tweeting that out. Love it. It’s a perfect time for New Jersey’s own six. That’s a perfect time. Uh, so that’s that’s what’s going on in my neck of the woods. How about your earners this week? Uh, not too much on this side as well. So the Cleveland Browns, they hired a defensive coordinator. Couldn’t tell you what his name is. He looks like Kevin Stefanski’s long lost brother. It’s kind of like he, uh. He put on a hat and some sunglasses, so come aboard. Uh. You’re welcome. We’ll, uh, you and I will have more about the draft and kind of the future of those teams here in the in the near future with our episodes. But, um, got a lot to talk about fixing that team. Um, the biggest focus right now on my end has been Ohio State basketball, which has been tough. Um, um, I was looking this up. So the NCAA has this thing called net rating, where they try to rate every single team based upon a few criteria, and Ohio State’s thirty seventh. Right. So you’re right on the bubble. Typically, like the top forty forty five teams get into the tournament and then there’s locks with everybody who wins their conference tournaments to make the sixty eight. Um, but when you look at their, their records, so they break it into quad one, two, three and four based on the team, how good they are, home, away, whatever the case might be. Quad two to four Ohio State is seventeen and one against quad two through four. They are versus quad one oh and nine oh nine. Yeah it’s bad every single time they have an opportunity to win a big game. Wisconsin one quad one. Nope. They they, uh, were up double digits against Virginia. They ended up losing that one by four. They lost this weekend. Poor Bruce Thornton went for thirty plus points. They ended up losing by six. Um, it is rough and I keep watching Trevor and I’m like, oh, I’ve seen this movie for the last four years, but I’m going to keep watching it. Yes, it’s a misery sports Co classic. There’s some guy on Twitter who’s very loud, and he’s always screaming that Calipari wanted to come to Ohio State. And instead we signed John Dibblers. Have we figured this out? Is it cousin brother, I never remember. It’s not his dad because, okay, it’s his brother. Yeah. Is that a thing? Did Cal actually want to come after he left Kentucky? I never heard that. I think he would have talked to us, but ultimately he had connections to Arkansas. And Arkansas just has money like the you. We’ve talked about it nil like the Buckeyes are actually not great in terms of basketball. They’re in the bottom half of the Big Ten in terms of spending. So name of the game is is money even in basketball. And so if Ohio State’s not going to spend if if your team if you’re listening to us and your team is not spending it just puts you against up against eight ball like you’re just in a tough spot. Yep. And they play in the coldest, most sterile arena. Oh yeah. It’s the worst. It’s like a cavern. It just goes out. It’s great for concerts for sure. Acoustics are awesome. Yeah. It’s so bad. So so bad. Yeah. Oh, well. That’s tough. Um. All right, that does it. That wraps up this week’s evaluation. Some organizations are, uh, stabilizing. Not the ones that we’re familiar with, but the ones we know are probably entering restructuring. Yeah. No, there wasn’t a lot of bright spots for that, that segment. But we were going to go to the mail room. And before we do that, we are going to thank another sponsor. Have you ever looked at the depth chart and thought I could run this back one more time? Apply for eternal eligibility fellowship. Specializing in medical red shirts, pandemic clauses and quote unquote unprecedented circumstances because nothing says leadership like being twenty four and still mentoring eighteen year olds on dorm etiquette. What are we doing? I don’t even know. The whole system is broken and that is part of it. Just got your ninth year of eligibility. What? I just don’t get it. I don’t know what we’re doing either, but thank you. That sounds like a great fellowship and you should definitely apply. And thank you for your sponsorship this week. Uh, as Zach said, let’s step into the mail room, uh, where optimism, outrage and overreaction arrive daily. Our staff has sorted through this week’s submissions, and we heard about it there. They did not do it with a smile on their face, but they did it. We had to make some cuts. Unapologetically sorry. We have one instrument. Well, that’s an apology. We don’t apologize. You just said don’t let me rewind that. I’m not sorry. We have one tool for this corpse of a company, and it’s the scalpel. And we will be cutting off organs. All right? Not sorry. That’s my official position. Sorry about that. But I’m not sorry. Well, to start out the mailroom, I have one tweet this this week. Um, and I know that you’ve mentioned him in the past. It’s Mr. Eric Collins. Oh my gosh. Announcer. For Charlotte. And he is just out of his mind right now. He’s so LaMelo ball is just a walking heat check. He’s throwing everything up. So in this game, they’re crushing the Wizards. Shocker. Sure. And LaMelo is like off one foot hitting crazy thirty five footers. So here’s Eric Collins in his prime. What I found PJ Hall will rebound LaMelo oh my word. Yeah what a corner for the kid. No one’s allowed to shoot except for LaMelo. You can do it from fifty feet away if you want to kid. He’s going up. Yes. The best third quarter ever. Oh, he’s so good. He sets himself. I love his passion. Yeah, I just love his passion. It’s a little over the top, but I’m here for it. I, I would take that all day over some of the sterile stuff you get. Yeah. Some of the other regional coverage. That’s what I’m saying. And like, people are out here trying to convince me that Gus Johnson is bad for football. You can miss me with that. I will take Gus and Mr. Collins all day, every day. I want that passion. I want it, no doubt. Well, Trevor, what do you got in the mail room? Uh, a couple quick entries. Um, I didn’t get to this one, but after the Super Bowl win, Chris. Chris Carter tweeted out. Hell of a win by Seattle. And congratulations to Sam Darnell. And it’s still up. It was from January twenty fifth. Didn’t get taken down. It’s still there. I just wanted to make sure we got that on the record because I love it. I love it when, uh, old athletes tweet, um, but don’t even care. Just lean into it. They’re like yeah you Sam Darnold whatever. Somebody was like that’s not what that means I don’t care. Um but I wanted to I came across this one. I didn’t get to play it, but I came across this when we were talking about the Jacksonville Jaguars, um, several weeks ago. And this is from it looks to be sometime in the early two thousand. I wish I had like a specific time this came from, um, but it looks like a time when Jacksonville was on Hard Knocks. And this is a pregame ritual from a lineman. And, uh, so to set the stage because you’ll get to watch it. But for our listeners, giant lineman. And then let me share this. As you can see, like a normal looking strength trainer human person just standing here. So that’s kind of the picture. And the lineman is going to ask him to do something and you’re gonna hear it. Oh yo, that ain’t good. Hold on. Wyatt. No, don’t crap yourself. Oh, no. Why is it reloading? It knows I’m playing something great. Okay, go to reset. He’s right before the clip starts. He’s asked his, uh, strength and conditioning coach or trainer or whoever to slap him in the face. Okay, that’s not personally how I get pumped up, but it is how this man gets pumped up. So you’re going to hear him get slapped in the face and it’s not good enough. Oh, yo, that ain’t good enough. Come on Joe. Oh, thank you baby. Thank you. You make it come to my damn mouth. All about baby. You gotta make blood come through the mouth. You can’t just smack me. And don’t hit me hard. Then when you hit him, you hit that mother. Let’s kick your ass. Kick your ass! Let’s go. Yeah. It’s the most in the world. It’s the most Terry Crews thing I’ve ever seen. Uh, very office linebacker. Um, yeah. So thank you for dudes posting their dubs for sharing that with me, because it’s one of my favorite clips I’ve ever seen. That is phenomenal. It was just a small man trying to slap another guy who wanted to get slapped. Yeah, just a normal you. But he’s like, no, that’s not good enough. How are you gonna hit me? I thought, bam, thank you. That’s what I needed. I needed to bleed in my mouth. And then you. We’ll tweet it out. We’ll put it on the website. But it’s it’s such a. He walks then through the tunnel into the where the rest of the guys are. And everybody’s getting pumped. And that’s when he lets out that primal. One of my favorite clips of all time. So glad I got to share it. So there you go. Great submission. That concludes this week’s correspondence. We appreciate the passion but question the optimism. Yes, please continue submitting those responsibly. Uh, we will, um, get to them when we can. And again, no apologies. No apologies are given before we step in into the Office of Moral Victories. Let’s hear from our next sponsor. This next segment is brought to you by the Get Back Coach union. Hey, get back coaches. You’re putting yourself on the line every freaking week. And for what? So you might get run over. So head coach might give you an elbow when he doesn’t want to get back. But it’s your job to help him get back. But he doesn’t want to get back. But there’s a camera showing you to help him get back, and that’s what he needs to do. Join our union. You know what? I we’re in a first. I’m just gonna stop and say we’re not accepting this sponsorship because I’m worried about the mixed messaging. I just realized that freaking unions, man. Yeah, no, I’m not reading the rest of this ad read because frankly, I don’t want any, um, pro-union talk getting around the mail room, especially, um, the one employee left is trying. He’s trying his best. We’ve got him convinced he won’t have quorum even though he’s the one member. So, uh, thank you to nobody for funding this out. We will not accept your money, but we will go into the Office of Moral Victories. Results remain objective while interpretation remains flexible. Trevor. So let’s honor this week’s recipients. My employees of the week are Bodo Glimt, Bodo Glimt, Bodo Glimt. Is that our mail room mailroom employee. This is it. Might as well be. They knocked Inter Milan out of the Champions League playoff. It’s a whole team Bodo Glimt. It might as Bodo Glimt in the basement. He’s sorting our mail. These letters came out and knocked out Inter Milan. And this is. We know where this is from. So I did some research because I was like, what the hell is Bodo Glimt? It sounds like a Lord of the rings. Yeah, like enemy or something. Yeah it does. Uh, they’re from Eliteserien, so it’s Norway’s top professional league. Norway of all places. Never would have guessed that. So congrats to Bodo Glimt. Nice one. Bodo. Uh, yeah, Bodo Glimt. All right, that’s an all timer. Uh, I can guarantee you’ve never had Bodo Glimt on the show before. Um, my employee of the week is none other than star defenseman for your Columbus Blue Jackets Zach Werenski, who set up Let’s Go. The game winning, gold medal clinching goal for the United States men’s hockey team at the Olympics. He just dummied Nathan MacKinnon. I mean, Nathan MacKinnon had a chance to move this puck out of the zone and over time, Werenski just bodied him, just just stunned him, sent it over. And the rest is history. And it’s always fun when somebody’s making a big play in the Olympics. Is is from your hometown. So congratulations to our boy Zach Werenski. So I thought it was interesting in that game Trevor in overtime. Right. Three v three, which is wild for a gold medal game. Um, I felt like. And I swore every time Canada got the puck, they were subbing in Connor McDavid. Like they would just cycle through every single line until until he got the puck. And then it was just go. It was three or four times. I was like, what is this? Just like a NBA one on one scrimmage or something? Yes. It’s not fair. And I will say, as a Dallas Stars fan, this will surprise nobody. I think personally, if Canada had thrown out Thomas Harley and gotten him some looks in three on three, Thomas Harley has like four overtime game winning goals as a defenseman. Like that is his thing. He loves like he is so good at overtime. And I did not go back and check this. I did not see him out there. Now Canada stacked, I get it. Uh, when you have people like Werenski, like you’re going to let them get longer shifts, but you didn’t play the Dallas star and look. What? Look what happened. Yeah. What are you going to do? But shout out to our boy, Zach King. Uh, and congrats to Bodo. Bodo. Glimt. Glimt can’t be. Put some respect on that name. Glimt. Oh my gosh. Um. The scoreboard may disagree. The narrative department, it remains productive. We’re writing our own narratives here. Spin zone baby. Before we head out to the briefest of deep dives. Zach, who’s our next sponsor? Let’s see. 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You know, I thought because of, um, the Olympics and the amazing time that we all had watching hockey, I had to stay in hockey. Right? Had to. Okay. Um, and I looked at the standings, and I don’t think it can get better than deep diving on the Canucks because they are in last place. They are trash. We’ve talked about the Ottawa Senators. Um, and so I thought, who do I want to talk about? And I tonight we’re going to briefly talk about one of the forgotten, um, adored, beloved franchises, the Atlanta Thrashers. Do you remember the Atlanta Thrashers, Zach? I do not. Okay. Thrashers. So they came into the league a year before the Blue Jackets. So the NHL had this plan. We’re going to expand. We’re going to do it with four teams. We’re going to do it over three years. So first and I had this order completely wrong. It did not remember this. First came the Nashville Predators. They get to go first. Uh, so they’re in like ninety six or seven. And then the next year is the Atlanta Thrashers. And then the next year they do both the Minnesota Wild and the Columbus Blue Jackets somehow. Well, that is subjective. I was going to say somehow the Blue Jackets came out with the worst deal. But, um, it depends how you view the Thrashers because the Preds have been fine. They suck now, but they’ve been fine. They went to a Stanley Cup final. Vibes are good. We’re throwing catfish out onto the ice. Nashville Predator games are a blast. I went and watched the stars played down there. I cannot recommend it enough. It is an absolute blast. Okay, um, Minnesota Wild are very good, passionate fans up there. Um, it’s basically like the Browns getting the Browns back because the stars stole the North Stars. And so they got their team back. So that’s good vibes. The Thrashers were really trying to break into that southeast United States market. And so, um, they were named the Thrashers because the state bird of Georgia is, of course, the brown thrasher. Of course, it is not an especially intimidating bird, but thrasher sounds pretty badass. Like that’s a cool name, and apparently it’s because of a bird. I always thought that it was maybe just a contest and some folks won so they get a hockey team. It’s unsurprisingly owned by Ted Turner, who also owns the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks at the time. So this dude’s just, you know, the TBS mogul, like the Turner Broadcasting. I was gonna ask. Yeah. Is it connected to that? Okay. Yep. And so he’s got cash on cash. The problem is that the Thrashers become the afterthought of his enterprises. So they burn bright? Not especially pretty, but they fizzle out pretty quick because he’s not dedicating the funds, uh, that they needed to be competitive. So when you look at the Atlanta Thrashers history, uh, we’re only around from they started their first season was in ninety nine, um, the ninety nine two thousand season. And by two thousand and eleven, they are done. So yikes. We burned real bright for eleven, twelve years, and then we got out of Dodge. So I think this goes back. We’ve had some other teams that we’ve looked at to where, uh, they’ve just had heartbreak because you get attached to these teams and then, uh, they just leave. We looked at, you know, the Hornets and Pelicans situation. Um, we’ve looked at some others too where teams leave and like what are you supposed to do with that? Right? The Raiders move from, uh, God almighty. Oakland. Oakland. Oakland. Yeah, all of them. Now they’re in, uh, Vegas. So this is another situation because, uh, the Thrashers actually moved. So they still exist, but they’re a different team now. They are actually the Winnipeg Jets now. So this is that is even though there were the Winnipeg Jets before, uh, this is an expansion. They exist currently as an expansion team made in ninety nine and then moved up up north of the border for the twenty eleven twenty twelve season. And I remember that year, everybody being really excited that they were like switching back but like, bummed for the Thrashers. The Thrashers are kind of like this meme, um, Um, organization of like, you know, it’s funny to be a, you know, to see, like a Thrashers jersey or it’s funny to talk about, like, I’m still a Thrashers season ticket holder. Uh, it’s become kind of a joke and for good reason. During their time from ninety nine to twenty eleven, they only made the postseason once. It was in oh six oh seven, and they promptly got swept by the Rangers. Even though they won their division. Um, they won the Southeast Division’s in hockey now they matter, which I got some hot takes on that if anybody wants some hot takes. But it used to be just top eight in the West, top eight in the East. Uh, and you go to the playoffs. They were good enough to win their division in oh six oh seven. Uh, but then unfortunately, they got swept. They went through some stuff so not to bring the room down, but, um, some not great things happened. Uh, they had a really good player. Danny Heatley, and like, a young up and coming star forward. And, um, after when was this? I think this was in oh three. Um, yeah. So in oh three when ownership changes a little bit. So it’s no longer under Turner’s control. It’s with a bigger group. And there was optimism like maybe this will help. It didn’t, but maybe it would. Um, Heatley is writing and this is in like September. So it’s like before the season starts, he’s driving his Ferrari and his teammate, um, a fourth line center, Dan Snyder, is in the car and he crashes his Ferrari. They both have terrible injuries. And then Snyder dies five days later from his injuries. Um. Awful tragic situation. Um, Heatley tore his ACL, MCL. Had, you know, uh, broken jaw, just really bad injuries. Not to mention, like, the trauma that comes with that. Um, it was such a bad accident that they were thinking about bringing charges for negligent homicide, that kind of thing. Uh, they eventually dropped those, but understandably, I think I would say the next year he’s like, I can’t be here anymore. Like, I don’t want to be. This is all too much to take in. Like living in the same place where this happened. Like I need to be traded. So they did trade him, uh, and they randomly traded him for Marian Hossa. Um. Oh, yeah. Great player. Um, and They have a young Kari Lehtinen. I don’t know if you remember Kari Lehtonen. He was. He played for the stars. He’s a goalie. He played for the stars for like ten years. And in my mind we drafted him. But he was actually a Thrashers pick and, uh, and played a few really good years for them. Um, they make the playoffs and unfortunately get swept. So you have a lot of stuff happening here. Why fans are miserable, unstable ownership. You’re not spending the money. You need to be competitive. More playoff droughts. That’s always a hallmark of the teams that we talk about. And then on top of it all is like personal tragedy at like the peak when everything is going super well, like off the field stuff and absolutely deter and ruin a season like nothing else. You could think everything’s going great. We’ve somehow avoided injury bugs, but then something off the field happens. Your star player gets in trouble for this, that or the other. Something happens and it’s just, uh, dashed. Yeah, in their logo is horrific. I mean, it is like Charlotte bobcat level. I’m looking at this thing. It’s like blue and orange and it’s like a bird with a stick. It’s bad. And I never understood. I was like, that’s such a cool name, but, like, why is there a bird with a stick? And it’s because of the state bird. And like you, their alternate is like the bird doing like a T, and it’s just as bad. Like, all of them are bad, and not in a fun way. Uh, so they know they last ten years. Um, they have, uh, some really good players come through. Um, uh, Ilya Kovalchuk, very, very good player. Oh, by the way, that guy that was like, um, got in the car accident and he needed to get traded the next two years for Ottawa. He had over one hundred points. Like, oh my word. So Jeez, you had to go watch him have a very good career with Ottawa. Uh, sad about that. And then, um, in twenty ten, twenty eleven, you gotta say goodbye. Uh, I do have a consolation prize for you. Atlanta. Guess what? You got to keep the naming rights to the Thrashers for if hockey ever comes back. So. Wow. Congratulations. Yeah, you at least have that. But, um, Atlanta hockey fans, if you’re out there, if you have somehow found us, uh, I just want you to know you’re welcome here. And I’m sorry for that heartbreak that you had to go. That’s tough. That’s tough. Especially with a city that size. Right? You would think you would get enough support and enough buzz. Like, obviously they got basketball, football, Falcons, Hawks, um, even the Braves like you mentioned. Um, um, yeah. I mean, you should be able to get enough. That’s just that’s tough. And to be invested too, I can’t imagine being invested for fifteen years, and all of a sudden it’s just like, well, I don’t have a team to root for. There’s no Thrashers anymore, right? And they went all the way up to Winnipeg. I don’t want to be a fan of that team. It’s not like they’re close or even in the same country. Absolutely not. Well, thank you so much for the deep dive, Trevor, that, uh, ultimately concludes our episode. Several trends remain concerning. None are surprising. Remember, disappointment is temporary. Patterns are persistent. We will reconvene next week at Misery Sports Co, where suffering is scalable.