What's it like for an NHL team to relocate? Former Thrasher says 'first emotion was anger' (2024)

Chris Thorburn remembers the exact moment when he learned that he and his young family would be relocating from Atlanta to Winnipeg.

In the spring of 2011, the Atlanta Thrashers forward was getting ready to undertake a significant backyard renovation when his cellphone rang.

“We were putting a pool in our backyard in Atlanta. The excavator was in the backyard about to dig the hole for the pool and I got a call from Kevin Cheveldayoff welcoming me to Winnipeg,” says Thorburn.

Rumors about a potential sale and relocation for the Thrashers had been swirling for months. And even when the finality sank in, there were conflicted feelings for Thorburn and his family.

“It was an array of emotions, to say the least,” says Thorburn. “And the first emotion was anger.”

Thorburn was one of the most outspoken advocates for keeping the Thrashers in Atlanta. In the spring of 2011, he attended public rallies to generate support for the team. Thorburn often gave passionate interviews to local media, pleading for league officials to reconsider the idea of moving the Thrashers out of Atlanta.

“Just for owners to turn their backs on you, it kind of makes you mad. Obviously, we don’t know every aspect of the deal and where they’re coming from,” Thorburn told the local FOX news affiliate on May 23, 2011. “From everything we’ve heard, from rumors that we’ve heard, it’s discouraging just knowing that they’re trying to dump us. That makes a guy mad.”

But Thorburn’s anger would soon morph into resignation and acceptance. And then his focus shifted to the logistical side of the relocation, because he and his wife, Sara, had a young son.

“We had one child at the time. He was too young for school, so it was a bit easier to transition,” says Thorburn.

One of the first things the couple realized was that a significant climate shift was on the horizon. They would be trading the warm Georgia breeze for bitterly cold Manitoba nights, where the windchill could plunge the temperature to minus-40 Fahrenheit.

“We had to call our parents and get all our winter stuff out of storage,” Thorburn said with a laugh. “We didn’t need that in Atlanta.”

The NHL collective bargaining agreement calls for “transferred players” — either via trade, waivers, expansion or team relocation — to have reimbursem*nt for reasonable moving expenses they incur. This includes a round-trip ticket for the player and spouse to scout out potential homes or schools in the new city.

The Jets’ front office connected the Thorburns with a real-estate agent to start the process of finding a new place in Winnipeg. The team picked up the expenses of moving their possessions from Atlanta to Winnipeg and, from a logistical standpoint, Thorburn says the move itself was relatively painless.

When Thorburn read the suggestion that Coyotes players might be offered a group visit to Salt Lake City to scout out their new NHL home, he thought that was a smart idea. That was not something on the table for Thrashers players in the summer of 2011.

“That seems like a huge perk for the players. At least going into the summer, they can see what they’re getting into,” says Thorburn. “The Thrashers players, we didn’t all go to Winnipeg like that. So if someone went to Winnipeg that summer, we would check in with him and see how his trip was.”

Thorburn says the phenomenon of being relocated is unique and can serve as a bonding moment. When a player gets traded, they can feel a sense of awkwardness and isolation as they join a new group. But with relocation, it’s often a group of 15 to 20 players and some staff members who are all making the same leap.

“You’re all going as a group and you’re all experiencing it together,” says Thorburn. “For the Coyotes, it might be able to galvanize the group.”

The difficult thing is that not all the staff come along for the relocation. In the case of the Thrashers, the new ownership group had their own equipment and training staff in mind for the Jets, meaning the majority of Thrashers staff were left behind in Atlanta. Thorburn is hopeful the Salt Lake group will consider bringing Coyotes support staff along to Utah.

“The trainers are the backbone. Every player will tell you that and I hope they take care of them,” says Thorburn. “I hope they consider moving with the players because they are family and they play a huge part in our careers.”

Having been through relocation himself, Thorburn is keenly observing the Coyotes storyline this month. He understands many of the players have a strong sentimental tie to Arizona, much like he did with Atlanta. His advice for the Coyotes players who are headed to Salt Lake City is to embrace the idea of starting a new chapter, because they might end up falling in love with Utah.

“Have an open mind,” says Thorburn. “I loved Atlanta, but I was naive to how good the experience was in Winnipeg. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

On May 31, 2011, Gary Bettman sat at a table next to Mark Chipman and David Thomson to announce the return of the NHL to Manitoba after a 15-year hiatus.

“It’s nice to be back in Winnipeg after all these years,” Bettman said to open his portion of the press conference, a remark that drew a hearty round of applause.

It was a celebratory moment, filled with smiles and cheers.

At that exact same moment — 1,500 miles to the south — there was a much more somber gathering on the practice court of the Atlanta Hawks. The Thrashers called an all-hands staff meeting to finally update employees about the worst-kept secret in the industry. Team president Don Waddell and minority owner Bruce Levenson were on hand to provide an update.

Ben Wright, who oversaw the Thrashers’ social media and website content, was in attendance for the grim meeting on the hardwood basketball court.

“They just told us the team is being sold and it’s pending the board of governor’s approval,” recalls Wright. “In the meantime, they told us to ‘keep doing what you do. There will be decisions on what happens.'”

It was the first time Thrashers management directly acknowledged the situation with staff members. As rumors swirled for weeks, team employees were kept in the dark. In May of 2011, the Globe and Mail reported the Thrashers were on the verge of being sold and relocated to Winnipeg. Even that report didn’t elicit any acknowledgment from Thrashers ownership or management.

“We were constantly told to ignore it, and they would tell us if there was something to worry about,” Wright says of the rumors leading up to the sale. “And if you have a team meeting with all the employees, someone is going to leak it. So I understand that.”

There were three weeks of uncertainty in June of 2011 for Thrashers employees, as the final sale of the team was pending NHL board of governors approval. Like many employees, Wright was given the freedom to search for other employment opportunities while he was at work.

But that all came to a crashing halt on June 21, 2011. Within an hour of the NHL board of governors granting approval of the sale and transfer to Winnipeg, Thrashers employees were being summoned into meetings with human resources members to discuss their fate.

Some employees would be retained, working exclusively for the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks. But there was a redundancy factor, as many jobs held by Thrashers employees in sales, marketing and communication, were already occupied or shared by somebody on the basketball side. And the only Thrashers employees who were offered an opportunity to relocate to Winnipeg — outside of the players — were a handful of members of the hockey operations department. That meant dozens of Thrashers staff were left unemployed once the relocation was finalized.

Wright believes a similar situation may play out for Coyotes front-office employees as they prepare to relocate to Salt Lake City. The Utah Jazz have an existing infrastructure in place for marketing, sales and other departments that they can use to help launch the NHL team.

“I can’t imagine the Jazz saying to Coyotes staff, ‘Anybody who wants to come to Utah, come and join us,'” says Wright. “The Jazz know their people, they know their process. I don’t imagine anybody from marketing, legal, sales or departments like that will be going.”

Wright recently reached out to the social media manager for the Arizona Coyotes to offer some helpful advice. Wright suggested that Coyotes staff should immediately save as much work as possible from their website because it could be shuttered with no advance warning. Wright — who worked six seasons with the Thrashers — was unable to build a portfolio of stories, interviews and content that he created because everything vanished in a snap of a finger.

“I expected to run things as normal until the end, but without any notice to me, the Thrashers’ Twitter account went dark. It just disappeared,” says Wright. “The team website became a landing page that directed people to Phillips Arena.”

When Wright met with a human resources official on June 21, 2011, the meeting was swift and orderly. He received two weeks of pay for each year he was a full-time employee of the Thrashers. There was no prolonged negotiation or conversation.

“I just told them, ‘Tell me what I need to sign,'” says Wright. “Then I turned in my phone and that was it.”

Wright says he did have one final request after signing his termination papers. He wanted to eat one last lunch with fellow employees in the Thrashers’ staff room. As he was enjoying his meal, however, a different human resources official quickly intervened.

“He said to me, ‘Ben, you’ve already signed your papers. I need you to leave the building immediately. And if you’re not OK with that, I’ll get someone over here,'” recalls Wright.

Startled, Wright had no choice but to exit the building for a final time.

“But a different HR person saw what happened to me and she felt bad,” says Wright. “So she handed me an autographed team stick on my way out of the building.”

The Atlanta Thrashers played their final game on April 10, 2011, against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

As Dan Kamal wrapped up his broadcast from the home radio booth following a 5-2 Thrashers loss that evening, he did not consider it would be the final NHL game he would be calling from Philips Arena.

“I was trying to block it out. I still had a sense of hope after that game. I don’t remember being devastated that it was a done deal,” says Kamal. “But as it turned it, it was already almost done.”

Kamal served as the play-by-play voice on radio for all 11 seasons of Atlanta Thrashers hockey, working alongside analysts Billy Jaffe and Jeff Odgers. But when the team relocated in the summer of 2011, Kamal was not offered an opportunity to continue his role in Winnipeg.

This is not always the case when it comes to broadcasters. When the Winnipeg Jets moved relocated to Phoenix in 1996, play-by-play man Curt Keilback made the trek with the team, continuing to serve as the home broadcaster. As Kamal monitors the situation with the Coyotes, he is hopeful their broadcasters will have a chance to relocate with the team like Keilback did nearly 30 years ago.

This season, the Coyotes television broadcast team consisted of play-by-play man Matt McConnell, analyst Tyson Nash and rink-side host Todd Walsh. Bob Heethuis and Lyndsey Fry handled the play-by-play and analyst duties on radio.

“I want them to land wherever they’d like to land,” says Kamal. “If the Arizona broadcasters want to go to Utah, I hope they’re given an opportunity.”

Kamal wanted to the opportunity to continue his role with Jets, but says he was facing too many obstacles to transfer from Atlanta to Winnipeg.

“I would have gone anywhere the Thrashers relocated if the new ownership wanted to keep me on as the radio broadcaster,” says Kamal. “The hurdle for us was, this was over the border. And they already had a crew from the AHL franchise.”

Still, in the Jets’ inaugural season in 2011-12, Kamal did manage to have a role with the radio broadcasts — albeit not from the broadcast booth. The radio rights in that first season were held by AM station CJOB, and they reached out to Kamal to serve as a reporter that season. Kamal would file pre- and post-game reports from Jets road games in 2011-12. Sometimes he would do hits into the broadcast from Atlanta.

“It was obviously bittersweet. But CJOB wanted to tap into that knowledge of mine from following the team since 1999,” says Kamal. “It made the goodbye a little bit longer for me.”

Kamal worked a couple more seasons as a television host for Columbus Blue Jackets games, before leaving the NHL broadcasting world entirely. Still, he holds onto fond memories from his time with the Thrashers, including capturing a Southeast Division championship and making their only playoff appearance in 2006-07. Kamal steadfastly believes Atlanta deserves another chance to host an NHL franchise, believing their problems were rooted in complicated ownership issues — rather than a lack of fan interest.

“This is a good fan base in Atlanta. I hope people respect what Atlanta is and what it can be,” says Kamal. “If they get another chance, it will be an amazingly successful NHL franchise.”

(Photo of former Atlanta Thrashers forward Chris Thorburn: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)