Mark Scheifele spent 2025 etching his name into Winnipeg Jets and Atlanta Thrashers franchise record books.
On Feb. 24, Scheifele’s overtime goal against San Jose made him the franchise’s record-holder for goals, surpassing Ilya Kovalchuk. On Oct. 18, Scheifele’s goal against the Predators made him the franchise record-holder for points, surpassing Blake Wheeler. Scheifele passed Wheeler for the franchise record in games played on Nov. 18 against Columbus, earning him his third Jets/Thrashers record of the calendar year.
But Scheifele has said and repeated — for several years at this point — that he’s focused more on chasing Dale Hawerchuk for the Winnipeg goals record. Whatever the franchise delineation might say, Scheifele and the overwhelming majority of fans treat both sets of Jets history as the same.
The first edition of Jets history moved to Phoenix with Winnipeg’s first NHL franchise in 1996, but that franchise now lies dormant.
As the statue of Hawerchuk outside the Canada Life Centre would indicate, the original Jets team’s history is still celebrated not just by fans, but also by the Jets organization, which bought the struggling Thrashers from Atlanta.
So The Athletic asked Gary Bettman in December if the NHL had a process in place to amalgamate Jets 1.0 and 2.0 NHL records under the umbrella of the current franchise, as would be the wishes of most Jets fans.
Bettman indicated that the league had been working on the concept for years, saying, “It’s not as simple as just doing it.”
Shouldn’t it be, though?
In this discussion, I asked our local history expert Sean McIndoe to weigh in. Sean’s been banging the drum on this issue for a while now. But we decided to give Bettman’s argument a stress test, and see if it is really as complicated as some make it out to be.
Murat: Let me start with the question everyone asks when it comes to the Jets records. If the NHL finds some way to consolidate Jets 1.0 and Jets 2.0 records, what should it do with Atlanta?
Sean: The Jets are the Jets. Let’s start there. That’s the foundation we should be building on. And even if we run into problems along the way, we should remember that the Jets are the Jets.
Why? Because, and this is crucial, it’s how fans think. That’s what should matter. The NHL is an entertainment product, one that’s built for fans and only survives because of those fans. Whenever they have a major decision to make, their first question should be “What would a fan want us to do here?” You don’t have to look very hard to find cases where they obviously haven’t done that, and the results generally speak for themselves. (Hello, loser point, animated board ads, and gambling spam.)
And my argument is that there isn’t a Winnipeg Jets fan out there who would agree with a sentence like, “The Jets’ all-time single-season goals record is held by Ilya Kovalchuk with 52, not by Teemu Selanne, who never played for the team.” I mean, all of that is technically correct based on how the league does its record-keeping. But the league does it wrong, which is why you get weird statements like that, that are supposed to make sense but don’t.
So what do we do with Atlanta? Ask the fans. And my guess is they’d say, “We’re not really too concerned about that because Atlanta isn’t a team anymore.” That’s not to say you get rid of them. Kovalchuk still had his 52-goal seasons. Those records all still exist. But you don’t try to cram them into Jets history, any more than we’d insist that Cleveland Barons stats should still be floating around some current team’s record book.
And then if and when Atlanta gets a new team, they can have the records if they want them.
Murat: Have you been to Winnipeg in recent years? I’m trying to think of what fans might think, and this one strikes me as a standout: There’s a statue of Hawerchuk at True North Square, across the street from Canada Life Centre. According to NHL records as we have them today, Hawerchuk didn’t play for the current Jets franchise. Doesn’t this strike you as weird?
Sean: It’s super weird!
And I’ll give the Coyotes some credit here because they at least made a half-hearted attempt to carry over some of that original Jets history, back when we assumed that the NHL would never make its way back to Winnipeg. They honored Hawerchuk’s number, which was a nice gesture. Then they let Anthony Duclair wear it, because why not, because none of this makes sense.
If you’re going to tell me that there’s also a Marc Savard statue outside the Jets arena, then I’ll reconsider. But my guess is there isn’t, and never would be, because he was never a Jet, and the Jets are the Jets.
Murat: One thing I like about you is your consistency. And the NHL has over a hundred years of precedents to go by, which we can look to for consistent interpretations of how to handle situations like this.
There are several cases where teams’ records move from one city to the next when a franchise relocates. New Jersey honours Colorado Rockies records, doesn’t it? (Does it?) Colorado, Carolina, and Dallas incorporate Quebec, Hartford, and Minnesota, don’t they?
But then you’ve got Jets 1.0 records … Which moved to Phoenix and then expanded to Arizona by the transitive power of bankruptcy, and are now languishing in the desert because the NHL didn’t move them to Utah. The defunct Arizona team is the second most common “what about?” to sort out when Bettman talks about difficult decisions.
I’ll start simple and then try to stump you. What about Arizona, where popular 1.0 Jets like Shane Doan, Teppo Numminen, and Nikolai Khabibulin continued their careers? Shouldn’t the NHL try to do right by the ghost of the franchise that it still seems to want to resuscitate someday?
Sean: First, those franchises you mention all kind of recognize the former records. For example, Carolina and Colorado mostly unretired the Hartford and Quebec numbers, even Gordie Howe’s No. 9 (which hasn’t been used in Carolina but is officially unretired). And that’s fine! Remember, it’s about the fans. Presumably, those organizations were thinking about their own fan base when they made those decisions. And if those fan bases said things like, “We have no idea who Marc Tardif is and don’t really care,” then that’s a fair reason to not worry too much about someone else’s history.
As for Arizona, yes, the NHL should do right by them, absolutely. In this case, that means keeping their records in safekeeping, not handing them to some other team that doesn’t care about them. Hold on to the history, and then when Arizona inevitably gets an expansion team, they can decide what they want to do with them. If they want to maintain that history, great. If they prefer a truly fresh start, that’s fine too.
Again, nobody is saying that the records disappear and we pretend Shane Doan never happened. They’ll still be team records, part of NHL history forever. They just won’t be part of the history of any of the existing teams, just like “Phantom” Joe Malone’s stats from the Hamilton Tigers don’t show up in any of the 32 current team record books.
Murat: Let’s talk about Shane Doan then. He’s the Arizona franchise leader in goals (402) and points (972) after scoring seven times and adding 10 assists for the 1995-96 Jets. In your scenario, do they slash his Coyotes records to 395 goals and 955 points?
I ask not to prove I can do basic arithmetic but to point in a different direction. Fans can want what they want and clubs can do their best to honour those wishes. At some point, the NHL has to get involved and make some decisions. I’m not aware of them ret-conning their history prior to this moment, and the Arizona teams’ records go well beyond Doan. Numminen played 547 games for Winnipeg and 551 for Phoenix. Do the Coyotes records suddenly get chopped, in a retroactive sense?
Maybe that’s too easy and you can just say yes. Our old friend Craig Morgan once pitched the idea of Arizona and Winnipeg sharing those records. Everyone gets their own way. Does that feel too much like everyone on the team getting a participation trophy to you?
Sean: That’s a fair question. I think my answer would be that the records get chopped, because again, that feels like it’s the most in line with how a fan would think. If you were a fan in Arizona who watched every game the Coyotes ever played, you saw Shane Doan score 395 goals for your team, not 402.
I feel like that works. But maybe not. Maybe Craig’s option works, too. Any change always brings a risk of unintended consequences, so we should think through the weird stuff just in case. But also, these are hockey records from a few years ago, not holy tablets from centuries past. The existence of some edge cases shouldn’t be a reason to just give up and ignore the obvious fix that gets 98 percent of it right.
Murat: Let’s talk about one more edge case that Jets fans have expressed to me: The WHA.
I tend to sort Jets stats into WHA era, 1.0 era, and 2.0 era, wherein the Jets “franchise” is 2.0 and Thrashers. That sentence probably bored you to death and proved that you’re right to “The Jets are the Jets” everything. But maybe you’d stop here?
If you get your way, do Morris Lukowich’s 65 goals and 34 assists for the 1979 Avco Cup champions get added to Winnipeg’s new record book?
Sean: I wouldn’t count the WHA. It’s a separate league. It’s the same team, in a sense, because the NHL did “absorb” the WHA Jets back in 1979, but even then, they treated them largely like an expansion team. I think the Jets should be free to honor the WHA team as a key part of the city’s pro hockey history, and even fly the Avco Cup banners if they want to.
But I don’t think we need to carry over records from a separate league, and I don’t think that contradicts my “The Jets are the Jets” pillar.
Murat: I’ve had the epiphany and all of this is easy, now. It’s the league that counts! So, clearly the NHL Senators are the NHL Senators, right? They’ve won four Stanley Cups?
Sean: You son of a … OK, yes, the Senators are a weird one. By my own logic, I should be saying, “The Senators are the Senators.”
But also, that would mean that the Senators would have 11 Stanley Cups in total, many of them pre-dating the NHL itself. “The Senators have won more Stanley Cups than the Penguins and Oilers combined” is not a sentence that makes sense to me, or anyone else.
So, did I just get tripped up by my own logic? Did we just prove that I’ve been wrong all along? I don’t think so. I think there’s a very valid counterpoint that goes something like, “The old Senators were from almost six decades before the new version arrived, and that’s too long to consider them part of the same history.” I’m not sure where you draw the line, but it feels like it’s somewhere in there, right?
Or I could take the coward’s way out, and say something like: Sure, the Senators can be the Senators if they want, but they’ve already made their choice – they honour their history and hang the old banners, but they don’t count the old records. So it’s a moot point, because we said this was about teams having the choice, and in this case, the choice has already been made. Not as satisfying, maybe, but it still works.
Murat: This is Winnipeg Victorias erasure and I think you’re playing with fire by giving the Senators self-determination. Or by establishing a statute of limitations on self-determination. Either way, I’m confused.
All I know is that Jets fans want their records back. The NFL gave the Cleveland Browns their official history, back, didn’t it? Same with the NBA and New Orleans? On one hand, forget about everyone other than the fans of the team I cover. On the other, don’t those stories help Jets fans’ case — and prove that a league can do whatever it darn well pleases, so the NHL is wrong and it’s easy after all?
Sean: Absolutely. I’ll occasionally run into a hockey fan who doesn’t follow other sports and seems to think that this Jets stuff is some sort of radical new idea. But it’s not, we’re just asking the NHL to follow the precedent that’s already in place.
In 1996, the city of Cleveland lost the NFL’s Browns, who moved to Baltimore and changed their name to the Ravens. The Ravens took all the players and coaches, but crucially, not the Browns’ old record book. That was held in reserve for a future return of the league to Cleveland, which happened a few years later via expansion. That new version of the Browns, which arrived in 1999, immediately inherited their old records and history and holds it to this day.
Now, that wasn’t a perfect comparison for the Jets’ situation because Cleveland basically already knew they were getting an expansion team as part of the Baltimore deal. But it was the right move, and it makes sense. Nobody would try to pretend that legendary back Jim Brown is the Baltimore Ravens’ all-time leading rusher because he only ever played for one team, and that was the Browns. But is that any more ridiculous than saying Kovalchuk’s 52 goals beat Selanne’s 76 in Winnipeg? I don’t think it is.
Look, this stuff can get confusing, especially when you’re dealing with a longer time gap than the three years in the Ravens/Browns case. The NBA’s handling of the Charlotte Hornets is probably a better comparison here, and that one was a bit messier. But it’s OK if things get a little messy around the edges because we still end up in a better place. And fans end up getting to talk about their team like fans, not custodians of some dusty historical archive nobody wants to visit.