Cup Glory: The new NHL Winnipeg Jets remembered their old WHA triumph on the cover of their 1979-80 guide, putting Lars-Erik Sjöberg and the Avco Cup front and centre.
Quick check in on the Winnipeg Jets, who take on the Colorado Avalanche tonight at the Canada Life Centre in the hope that they can live to skate another day. Asked yesterday for his outlook, Jets coach Rick Bowness told reporters … just watch.
I think that’s what he said, anyway. His actual words were these:
“We can all say all the words in the world and say all the right things … tell you everything you want to hear. But everything will be decided on what our eyes tell us. Not our ears.”
Okay, then.
Whatever happens to the Jets tonight, Winnipeggers will always have what their ears told them in the spring of 1979. I wasn’t there, but I’m guessing it was a whole lot of hullabaloo, so maybe that’s inspiration the city could work with tonight.
It was a bad year, ’79, for the league those erstwhile Jets were playing in. The WHA was sinking fast, playing out its last season. On the bright side, the Jets surged past the Quebec Nordiques to open their playoffs that year, then overturned the Edmonton Oilers in the final Final to win their third Avco World Trophy.
The final Final finale was at Winnipeg Arena on the Sunday night of May 20, 1979, when the Jets browbeat the Oilers by a score of 7-3. Glen Sather was the Oilers coach, and his line-up featured an 18-year-old Wayne Gretzky, with Dave Dryden in goal.
Coaching the Jets was Tom McVie, who’d taken over from Larry Hillman 61 games into the season. Captain Lars-Erik Sjöberg was out for much of the year with an injury to an Achilles tendon, but he was back for the Trophy-clinching and, as pictured here, the Trophy-clutching. Other protagonists on the night included Jets’ goaltender Gary Smith and centreman Terry Ruskowski, along with the 10,195 fans who packed the rink, watched over by a surprisingly baleful Queen Elizabeth.
Both the Jets and the Oilers (along with Quebec and the New England Whalers) joined the NHL the following year, with Edmonton and Winnipeg both playing in the Smythe Division.
The Oilers made the playoffs that year, though they fell to the Philadelphia Flyers in the first round. The Jets fared … not as well. Just like Rick Bowness says, everything was decided that year by what our eyes told us, not our ears, and in plain sight, Winnipeg missed the post-season.
Skateabout: Sjöberg takes the Avco for a skate in May of 1979 at the Winnipeg Arena. (Image: Jon Thordarson, Winnipeg Tribune, University of Manitoba Archives)
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