Atlanta Thrashers

National Hockey League (1999-2011)

Tombstone

Born: June 25, 1997 (NHL expansion team)¹
Moved: May 31, 2011 (Calgary Flames)²

First Game: October 2, 1999 (L 4-1 vs New Jersey Devils)
Last Game: April 10, 2011 (L 5-2 vs. Pittsburgh Penguins)

Stanley Cup Championships: None

Arena

Philips Arena
Opened: September 18, 1999³

Marketing

Team Colors: Atlanta Midnight Blue, Thrasher Ice Blue, Georgia Bronze, Capitol Copper, Peachtree Gold, White⁴

Ownership

Ownerahip:

Ted Turner (1997-2003)
Atlanta Spirit, LLC (2003-2011)

Background

The Atlanta Thrashers were a National Hockey League (NHL) expansion team that began play in 1999. It was the city’s second foray into the NHL. The Atlanta Flames, established in 1972, moved to Calgary in May 1980 to become the Calgary Flames.

In between, Atlanta hosted the Atlanta Knights of the top-level minor league known as the International Hockey League (IHL) from 1992 until 1996. That club also moved to Canada, settling in Quebec, where they became the Rafales.

Less than two months after the Knights departed, the city was being mentioned as a likely location for an NHL expansion team.⁵ At the time, Atlanta was the largest media market without an NHL team⁶, and the league was keen to fix this. However, it wasn’t immediately clear if there was an ownership group ready to apply for a franchise.

On September 28, 1996, Ted Turner announced that TBS, the cable broadcasting network he owned (along with CNN and others), would apply for an NHL expansion franchise for Atlanta.⁷ TBS also owned Major League Baseball’s Braves and the NBA Hawks. The latter, it was hoped, would share a new downtown arena with the hockey team.

Meanwhile, officials in suburban Cobb County started to entertain the idea of building an arena there to host an NHL team. Former Knights owners Richard Adler and Dave Berkman helped that effort, trying to entice an existing team to move to Atlanta.⁸ It was Turner and TBS that took the lead, though. Still, they had to compete with at least eight other cities for one of the four expansion slots being proposed by the NHL.

Atlanta commits

On Halloween, 1996, TBS paid the NHL’s $100,000 expansion fee.⁹ The company’s bid was further strengthened by the approval of a new downtown arena a few weeks later.¹⁰ To further entice the NHL, Turner invited several NHL owners, along with commissioner Gary Bettman, to an April pep rally held in the atrium of CNN’s headquarters, and then took them on a tour of Turner Field, the former Olympic venue that the Braves had just moved into.

The visit by Bettman came as the list of potential cities was whittled down to six, with Columbus, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Oklahoma City, Nashville, and Houston making the short list along with Atlanta. On June 25, Atlanta (along with Minnesota, Columbus, and Nashville) got the good news.¹¹ Turner immediately filed a trademark for the nickname Thrashers, which honored Georgia’s official state bird, the brown thrasher.¹² Not everyone was keen on the name at first, but the menacing bird in the logo and the team’s tenacious play won over the skeptics.

TBS then spent the next two years building the team in advance of its debut on September 18, 1999.¹³ On that night, the city was not only introduced to the Thrashers, but to the brand new Philips Arena as well. The visiting New York Rangers won the exhibition game 3-2 in OT. The night was not without incident, however, as Thrashers left wing Vladimir Vujtek was injured with 2:24 left in the third period. He was accidentally cut by the skate of the Rangers’ Valeri Kamensky and had to be taken to the hospital, where he received over 100 stitches.¹⁴

As most expansion teams do, the Thrashers struggled, finishing their first season with a record of 14-57-7. The fans turned out, though, as average attendance for their inaugural season was over 17,000 fans a game.

Rough ice

The team’s play didn’t improve much over the course of the next few seasons, and attendance started to decline, to around 13,400 in the team’s fourth season, another in which they did not qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs. Their problems were exacerbated by poor draft choices and Turner’s reluctance to spend the kind of money he was putting into his other teams, the Hawks and Braves.

In 2003, TBS sold both the Hawks and Thrashers to a local consortium called Atlanta Spirit that immediately tried to unload the latter, without success. Just eight days after the sale, star players Dan Heatley and Dan Snyder were involved in a car accident. Snyder ultimately died from his injuries. In spite of the tragedy and continued front office neglect, the Thrashers posted their best record to date at 33-37-8. The fans’ interest started to tick back up as well. They achieved their franchise-best record of 43-28-0 in 2006-07, which led to their only playoff appearance. They also saw their second-best attendance figures, with an average of over 16,000 fans coming through the turnstiles at Philips Arena. Unfortunately, they lost in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Further decline

It was downhill from there. While they won around 35 games in each of the next four seasons, they never returned to the postseason, and attendance started to decline. The team was hemorrhaging money, a problem made worse by the soft economy of 2008 following the housing market crash.

As early as the end of the 2009-10 season, Atlanta Spirit was aggressively seeking a buyer for the team, preferably a local one. There was interest from several groups outside of the market, but Atlanta Spirit wanted the team to stay in town. When no local investors came forward, they sold the franchise on May 31, 2011 to Truth North Sports & Entertainment of Manitoba¹⁵, who rebranded the franchise as the new incarnation of the Winnipeg Jets.

In 2003, the Mobile Mysticks of the ECHL moved to suburban Gwinnett, 30 miles northeast of downtown, where they became the Gwinnett Gladiators. In 2015, they rebranded as the Atlanta Gladiators. As of his posting, Atlanta is once again a top contender for future NHL expansion, although the league has no timetable to add new teams.

Links

National Hockey League Media Guides

National Hockey League Programs

Atlanta Thrashers

Tombstone

Arena

Marketing