5/31 – The Elephant in the Room for the Thrashers

The Thrashers entered the league three years later as an expansion franchise, but ownership problems, a losing team and dwidling attendance doomed the club. Assuming the deal goes through, Atlanta would become the first city in the NHL’s modern era to lose two teams. The blame can largely be attributed to the Atlanta Spirit Group (ASG), who managed the team, and their flawed logic in marketing the team by trying to entice African-American Atlanta residents into becoming hockey fans by acquiring an inordinate amount of African-American players on the Thrashers’ squad. Minority players included Dustin Byfuglien (from Minneapolis), Evander Kane (from Vancouver), Johnny Oduya (from Sweden) and Anthony Stewart (from Quebec). ASG focused on the race of several of its players to get cheap publicity and did not develop and educate its consumers. Ticket sales never picked up and the team was never embraced by the region. Such obvious pandering did not only fail, but set the franchise back so badly, that there were no real buyers for the team in Atlanta.

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