Canada is calling as Thrashers look for support in Atlanta

The Thrashers are in the midst of a reboot — with a new coach in Craig Ramsay, a respected teacher and tactician; a new general manager in Rick Dudley, who acquired five players from the Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks in the offseason; and a new star in Dustin Byfuglien, who Tuesday signed a five-year, $26 million extension. Byfuglien is one of the former Blackhawks.

As the Thrashers (25-23-10) try to earn their second playoff berth in 11 seasons — they sit ninth in the Eastern Conference, one spot out of qualifying range — the noise around whether the team is viable in Atlanta long term grows.

Busloads of Quebec City fans, clamoring for a team, traveled 535 miles to Nassau Coliseum on Long Island to see the New York Islanders play the Thrashers, a bid to show a fervor that exists north of the border. They camped behind the goals.

Thrashers President Don Waddell said a Quebec City newspaper sent reporters to inquire about the demise of hockey in Atlanta and whether the team might be relocated to — where else — Quebec City, which lost its team to Colorado in 1995. Winnipeg, which lost the Jets to Phoenix in 1996, also covets the Thrashers.

James Armstrong, an engineer from Marietta and a season ticketholder, scowls at the news the Canadians in Quebec and Winnipeg want to hijack the Thrashers.

"You can tell them to keep their (blank) hands off our hockey team," Armstrong said. "It's staying here."

The question is whether Atlanta can support a team. The city already has lost one NHL team, the Flames, who relocated to Calgary in 1980. The Thrashers were being shopped by their owners for six years, unbeknownst to fans.

The Atlanta Spirit, the owners of the Thrashers, the NBA's Hawks and Philips Arena, always insisted the Thrashers were not for sale, but court documents released in January revealed owners hunting for a buyer.

Waddell, the former general manager, said that, while the team is hunting for investors who might want to own a minority or majority stake, the current owners want the team kept in Atlanta.

"If we wanted to sell to somebody to move it, we could have done that 10 times over last summer," Waddell said.

The NHL has the final word on relocation, and, considering how furiously the league worked to keep hockey in Phoenix, it is dug in with the Thrashers. Atlanta, after all, is the eighth-largest TV market in the league of 30 teams, and the list of corporate businesses with a home in the city is impressive, including Coca-Cola, The Home Depot, Delta, Chick-fil-A, UPS and Cox.

"We are committed to the markets in which we place our franchises," said Bill Daly, the deputy commissioner of the NHL. "We owe it to the fans in those markets to make every possible and reasonable effort to make franchises work."
Ups and downs

In October and November, moving vans seemed a sure option. When the puck dropped, 30 rows up you could hear the players communicating with each other across the ice.

The Thrashers started the season 7-9 but then ripped off eight wins in nine games in a November-December stretch, and it looked like the black drape covering empty seats in the upper level might have to come down. Fans started to trickle back, but then there was a familiar downturn in January and February that featured 12 losses in 17 games.

The Thrashers' lone playoff experience came in 2007-08, when they were swept by the New York Rangers in a first-round series.

There have been seven losing seasons in 10, and the season ticket base has dwindled to between 6,000 and 7,000, which means the team has to sell a whopping 10,000 tickets each home game to get a good crowd in the 18,750-seat arena.

"I used to have eight season tickets, now I have three because I couldn't get anyone to take the other five," said Dennis Grogan, a distributor from Buford, Ga., who has been a season ticketholder for 10 years. "I was giving those five away.

"You want to see a better effort by ownership. This looks like a better team, so maybe it is turning around."

The owners are a target because their payroll is next-to-last in the NHL, $17 million under the $59.4 million salary cap. The Thrashers are averaging 13,056 fans this season, which ranks 29th. They weren't much better last season (13,607).

"This is a town with a lot of fans who are front-runners, and I think it is one of the toughest sports markets there is," said Bernie Mullen, former president of the Atlanta Spirit and now a sports consultant with the Atlanta-based The Aspire Group. "You have to win."
Step by step

The Thrashers are trying. This year they hired Ramsay, who played 14 seasons with the Buffalo Sabres. Dudley was instrumental in building winning teams with the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Blackhawks.

The remade Thrashers employ an aggressive style. They send defenders to hunt long rebounds, but that is burning them: They are 11th in the NHL in goals a game (2.83), but they are 26th in goals allowed (3.14) and 29th in shots against (33.8) because defensemen are caught too deep.

Byfuglien (BUFF-lin), who was a forward for three seasons with the Blackhawks but was moved back to defense this season, leads all defensemen with 17 goals. Byfuglien, who played in the All-Star Game, has lost some of his scoring ability as the season has marched on, perhaps because of extra ice time.

"We want to do things in phases, and we have already passed one phase and that's to be competitive," Dudley said. "Then you get to the point where you are a playoff team. Then you get to be an elite team that has a chance to win it all.

"We can skate with anybody; we can go to the net; we can bang, bump; we can score. Obviously on the defensive side it has to get more consistent, but we have played with, and beaten, some of the best teams."

The Thrashers seemed to be on their way nine years ago with first-round picks Dany Heatley (2000) and Ilya Kovalchuk (2001), but there was never enough ancillary talent. Poor drafts hurt the team, but so did a fracture in the ownership.

Steve Belkin, one of the original nine owners of the Spirit, was embroiled in a six-year lawsuit with other owners that was recently settled. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, citing court documents, reported the Thrashers had operating losses of $130 million since 2005.

"There is no doubt that the long-standing ownership dispute has damaged this club significantly," Daly said.

Waddell, whom many fans blame for poor drafts and a string of losers, was bumped upstairs to president of the Thrashers and executive vice president of the Spirit after the 2009-10 season. He said the well was dry in terms of finding investors but there was no hint of bankruptcy, which plagued Phoenix's ownership.

"We're not a desperate franchise," Waddell said. "Does attendance have to be better? Yes.

"We've been dealing with rumors for three years now about moving, and until we put people in the seats we will probably have to continue dealing with it."

The organization usually makes a heavy marketing push in January but kicked in more marketing money in December with the team thriving, Waddell said. The Thrashers have put up additional billboards and were advertising on 11 radio stations.

The fans responded when the team was winning — attendance topped 17,000 three times, including Dec. 18 when traded Kovalchuk returned with the New Jersey Devils— but the buzz is less noisy. Ramsay can't worry about it.

"I put an awful lot of pressure on myself … and we put an awful lot of pressure on our team. … We haven't got any more room for pressure," Ramsay said. "Our job is to play hockey and create a team that competes and is fun to watch. If we do that job, that's our end of the bargain."