As I looked around the dressing room on Day 1 of the first training camp of Winnipeg Jets 1.0, my stomach churned. It was my first look in a dressing room missing former teammates Terry Ruskowski, Kent Nilsson and Rich Preston — among others. Empty stalls where they used to sit had reality clubbing me over the head.
That National Hockey League team was stripped of some of its top players from the previous season. While GM John Ferguson Sr. didn’t orchestrate the "tank" job, vengeful NHL owners took care of that by dismantling our roster. They made sure our World Hockey Association Avco Cup championship team would be an NHL bottom feeder coming out of the gate.