The hope and despair of being a Winnipeg Jets fan

The National's Rob McKenzie shares his despair as a Winnipeg Jets fan and how hope of glory is worse than contstant mediocrity.

The Winnipeg Jets, right, have suffered a slump in form... directly following Rob McKenzie's glowing column on his hometown team. Marianne Helm/ AFP

What was I thinking?

Two weeks ago in this space, I wrote about my hometown Winnipeg Jets as a hardy band of up-and-comers.

Watch out for Winnipeg, I wrote, this time they have got it right.

When I filed my article, the Jets had won five games in succession. After I pressed the “send” button, they lost six.

After more than 40 years of cheering for the Jets, after decades of disappointment, I really ought to have seen this coming. Because when you cheer for a bad team, the cycle of fandom goes like this: Despair. Despair. Hope. Despair. Despair.

Those lapses into hope are not intervals that relieve the despair. They are the trapdoor that triggers the next round of despair.

Fans of bad sports teams have an ingrained sense of how it works: somewhere in Winnipeg, or Cleveland or Buffalo or Sunderland, a supporter of a sad-sack team lifts his head from the slough of despond and finds reason to smile.

He allows himself the audacity of hope.

The universe notices this, becomes upset, and restores order by smiting the team in the cruellest way — an injury, an unlucky bounce, a bonehead play at the worst moment.

I accept full blame for the Jets meltdown (which was relieved, finally, by a win on Sunday over Colorado).

And if it helps, I predict that the Jets will start another losing streak, will miss the play-offs for a fourth successive year, and will once again leave town for some desolate American sunspot where people don’t know a hockey puck from a chocolate doughnut.

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