Remembering the final game

“It was,” said goalie Nikolai Khabibulin, the ‘tender of record in the last Winnipeg Jets game and a veteran of 743 National Hockey League games, “the loudest building I’ve ever been in.”

“The noise,” marveled Norm MacIver, scorer of the final Jets goal that same, sad evening. “An hour before, even (underneath the stands) in the dressing room, you could hear the people cheering.”

In so many ways, it was a valiant last stand being staged that night, as the hockey world closed in around a smaller Canadian city that, deep down in its bones, had to know the end was near.

It was Game 6, and the mighty Detroit Red Wings had traveled north with hammer in hand, looking to pound the final coffin nails into their first-round opponents, the wobbling Jets. In the previous five games the Jets had only once managed more than just a single goal, and under the gaze of that giant portrait of Queen Elizabeth that used to hang in Winnipeg Arena, Detroit went up 3-0 as time ticked away in Period 3.

“The atmosphere,” MacIver said. “You don’t go into a game like that thinking, ‘This could be it.’ You always think you’re going to win and keep on playing. But I remember the White Out was so cool. And how early the people got to the arena.

“They were clearly the better team,” MacIver said of Detroit. “We scored to make it 3-1, about eight minutes left in the game. We still felt like we had some hope. But they scored an empty net goal... and that’s when it just hit you. The season is over. The Jets are finished. This is it.”

This is it.

“You’re so concentrating on trying to just keep it going,” said Keith Tkachuk. “Then, when the final buzzer goes off you realize, ‘This is it.’ The season is over. The Jets are finished. This is it.”

This is it.

If you lived in Quebec City, you’d had your “This is it” moment the year before. If you reside in Edmonton, you would narrowly avoid yours over the next few seasons.

But Winnipeg, with its aging arena, unwillingness to fund a new building, and lack of local ownership willing to fund a romantic but money-losing notion, well, this was a save neither Pokey (Reddick) nor the Bandit (Daniel Berthiaume) would be able to make.

Gary Bettman was building his American footprint, the Canadian dollar was trading at about 70 cents against the US dollar, and Winnipeg — an old railway town, in its day — had simply run out of coal. The train left for good that night, and Tkachuk — drafted 19th overall by Winnipeg GM Mike Smith in 1990 — was never of the mind that it would return.

“You always hoped, but I never thought it would, honestly, after the way it happened. But, good things happen to good people,” he said.

Tkachuk married a Winnipeg girl, and to this day spends a portion of the summer in Manitoba, as the Tkachuks bring their three children up from their St. Louis home to see family. He even purchased season tickets to the Jets, and on Friday flew in with the family to attend Game 1 Sunday afternoon at the MTS Centre.

“I support the Jets, after what they did for me and my career,” said Tkachuk, who earned north of $80 million during his NHL career. “I won’t use them often, but they will be used.”

There is a distinct feeling of a wrong being righted here, and those who saw firsthand what it meant to Winnipeggers, as their team packed up for the Arizona desert, their hearts will be just a little bit warmer this Sunday when the newborn Jets walk out of that tunnel and take their first strides out on to a clean, white canvas.

Awaiting them will be those Original Six icons, the Montreal Canadiens. In our country, or at least out here on the Prairie, there is no surer affirmation that you have returned to hockey’s big time than the sight of that Montreal sweater with its C and H.

Tkachuk still vividly recalls, “skating around Winnipeg Arena the last time, waving, saying thank you. It was a rough loss. A very, very difficult time for the great fan base in the city of Winnipeg and the province of Manitoba.

“A lot of good people were devastated; a lot of kids didn’t have a chance to look up to a special player in their home town. They deserve a team.”

Mark Spector is the senior columnist on sportsnet.ca