WINNIPEG – Three hours before puck drop, Greg Burnett awaited the fate of his beloved Winnipeg Jets, on the brink of elimination.
The 56-year-old retired high school teacher stood in a fenced-off courtyard, just beyond a statue of the late Jets legend Dale Hawerchuk, between the glittering reflection of newly developed office towers on what used to be a vast parking lot in Winnipeg’s age-worn downtown.
Burnett felt optimistic. He calls it a glass-half-full mentality when his team is “paradoxically aligned with impending doom.”
He sipped a Michelob Light as hundreds of Jets fans filled the streets around Canada Life Centre ahead of Game 5 of the team’s first-round playoff series against the Colorado Avalanche, trailing 3-1.
The stakes that night felt particularly high. The Jets’ successful regular season (second in the NHL’s Western Conference) was clouded by dwindling attendance and concerning comments made by ownership about the team’s future.
Winnipeg is Canada’s seventh-largest city. With a population of 758,000, it is the NHL’s smallest market.
The prairie hub proudly leans into its reputation as a large “small town.” The region boasts a rich history in the game — and a passionate fan base.
But Winnipeg is often overlooked by players. The Jets appear with great frequency on the “no-trade” lists of many contracts. High-profile players like Jacob Trouba, Evander Kane and PL Dubois have all forced their way out of town. In The Athletic’s anonymous player poll, Winnipeg was declared the destination that players least liked to visit on the road, with 41.24 percent of the vote.
That sentiment has a galvanizing effect on the fan base.
“The perception is that people want us to fail,” Burnett said, adding that the Jets faithful embrace the team’s underdog position.
Burnett wore a white Connor Hellebuyck jersey, the team’s All-Star goalie who recently signed a seven-year deal to stay in Winnipeg and was named a finalist for the Vezina Trophy. Burnett’s jersey could have been any member of the current Jets roster, aside from the team’s most recent trade deadline acquisitions. He has a jersey for almost every player who has played multiple seasons in Winnipeg since the team’s return more than a dozen years ago. His collection includes more than 60 jerseys from two generations of the Jets.
I first met Burnett in 2011, when he was one of the 13,500 fans who signed up for season tickets in 17 minutes when the Atlanta Thrashers moved to the Canadian Prairies, becoming the second iteration of the Jets.
He gave me a tour of the basement he’d dedicated to the team that left the city for Arizona in 1996, which had become central to Burnett’s life. Celia Burnett relinquished the basement to her husband, knowing he needed a place to address his anger and sadness at the Jets’ move to Arizona. He turned it into a shrine that includes a miniature locker room, old jerseys, game programs and memorabilia that spoke to the love and agony that comes with being a fan. The final A from the Winnipeg Arena sign above the entrance of the now demolished building sat on a landing above the basement stairs. Gillian, the youngest of the Burnetts’ four daughters, helped her father show off his prized Jets possessions.
Gillian was 9 then. She’s grown up sitting in the family’s seats — section 312, row 5 — next to her father. She is now 22 and has a Winnipeg Jets tattoo on her forearm.
“I got it in honor of my dad, because that’s what my dad is — the Winnipeg Jets,” Gillian said. “It’s part of him.”
She sat next to her 78-year-old grandmother, Donna, on a concrete stoop in True North Square, as a DJ pumped music into the pregame festival. Donna, who wore a white and pink Jets zip-up hoodie, also never misses a game, not because of an obsession with an on-ice product but because of what the team means to her family.
In the late 1970s, Donna bought season tickets to the original Jets franchise. For a single mother, the Jets became a way for her to connect with her rambunctious 8-year-old son. They drove more than a half-hour to each game and always went out to a restaurant they considered to be fancy. At the time, it was all doable on Donna’s teacher salary.
“We had a wonderful time,” she said. “I just loved it.”
Greg Burnett at the entrance of his Jets shrine. (Dan Robson / The Athletic)