Thrashers, Atlanta were never given a chance
Thrashers fans tried hard to keep hope, season after season. But the deck was stacked against them. (Hyosub Shin/AJC)
(Updated: 12:30 p.m.)
This is how it ends: With the weasel of a commissioner not stepping foot in the city, with another season passing without a playoff game, with a lying ownership group maintaining it did all it could to save a franchise that in reality it spent most of seven years wrecking.
Atlanta has lost an NHL expansion team to a Canadian outpost for the second time. The Thrashers are going to Winnipeg just like the Flames went to Calgary in 1980. A press conference was held in Winnipeg, while the Thrashers sent out this warm-and-fuzzy news release: “The Atlanta Thrashers announced today that they have entered into an asset purchase agreement with True North Sports and Entertainment …”
This isn’t about the fans or the market or certainly Gary Bettman’s fictional “covenant” with fans, which I believe he left in the same sock drawer with his conscience. It’s about greed and abandonment, plain and simple. It’s about a disingenuous ownership group, which had long lost any semblance of credibility, serving up fans swill and gruel and then wondering why the turnstiles sleep at night.
They’ll tell you they care. They don’t. They’re walking away with a fat check. While you mourn the loss of a franchise, they’re waving goodbye with one middle finger.
The NHL is leaving a city that never really was given a chance. It’s going back to a city that it left 15 years ago and that has grown by about 60,000 people and a couple of doughnut shops since. They will be discussing this decision one day at business schools, right after the sections on Charles Ponzi and Enron.
Atlanta didn’t fail. The franchise failed. But the NHL doesn’t care about that. This is a league that survives on franchise fees and relocation fees. It collected $80 million from Ted Turner for an expansion fee in 1997. (He joked in the Board of Governors meeting that followed that he could’ve saved $70 million by purchasing the Flames from Tom Cousins for $10 million. Nobody laughed.) The league reportedly will collect another $60 million for permission to move the Thrashers to Manitoba.
In five years, when another failing franchise wants to move into Philips Arena, Bettman will be happy to collect another fat relocation fee, and he’ll deliver the same canned, phony speech about how he always believed in this market. The guy has told so many lies, it’s a wonder he’s not an Atlanta Spirit partner. (One postscript: Bettman referred to them as the “Atlantic” Spirit on Tuesday.)
Now living in Calgary.
There are hockey teams in Tampa and San Jose and Raleigh, and I could go on. There’s still one inexplicably in Phoenix, which the NHL is floating for another year, maybe because Bettman plans to retire and open up a pawn shop there one day. Is Atlanta an inferior market to any of those cities? Or does product have something to do with it?
There was no reason to do this now. When the Phoenix-to-Winnipeg deal fell apart, the NHL (which owns the Coyotes) was out $170 million. Bettman panicked. So he crossed out Phoenix and wrote in Atlanta. But why couldn’t he have waited a year to see if another owner for the team
Now living in Winnipeg.
emerged? Winnipeg wasn’t going anywhere. Was Bettman that desperate for the $60 million?
“I have absolutely no doubt that this market can support an NHL team,” said Bob Hartley, a native Canadian, a Stanley Cup winner in Colorado and the only coach to get the Thrashers to the playoffs. “It’s a huge disappointment to see the Atlanta franchise leave before so many other cities in the league. I loved it there. My last two years in Atlanta were as exciting as what I went through in Colorado. We had only two [home] playoffs games but it was a Stanley Cup atmosphere. But Hoss [Marian Hossa] left, Kovy [llya Kovalchuk] left, I was gone. It felt like the organization was drained of its energy.”
First player: Damian Rhodes. First draft pick: Patrik Stefan. First coach: Curt Fraser. First general manager: Don Waddell. That was only the beginning. Eleven seasons: one playoff berth, no wins.
Turner was followed by AOL/Time Warner, a bad marriage that was followed by an even worse one: Atlanta Spirit, LLC. Hossa saw no future here. Kovalchuk, given so many misdirections by part-owner Bruce Levenson in negotiations, wasn’t even sure the team would stay. Both wanted out.
There never was a commitment. There never was hope. There never was a plan — at least not one that worked.
A city just lost a franchise. While you mourn, they laugh. It’s nothing less than shameful.
By Jeff Schultz
♦
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1,115 comments Add your comment
Steve-o
May 31st, 2011
3:36 pm
Enter your comments here
WHY?
May 31st, 2011
3:36 pm
Because of the poor ownership ASG and the completely incompetent former General Manager now(for the time being) Presiedent. And you wonder why an organizatioin like the Detroit Red Wings were gald to get rid of him.
I wonder how much of the $130 million Waddell wasted on his inability to retain the top draft picks that he selected over the years because they were smarter than him and chose to get out before this(which we had more #1’s due to the inferior product he delivered). Our infamous ASG decides to promote him to president validating that they are all incompetent.
Well finally the new GM Rick Dudley has created a good team with a strong farm system to feed that, so I guess the only think to do is to wish those players, coaches and stafff best of luck. Sorry we can’t enjoy this together.
Tommy
May 31st, 2011
3:37 pm
It’s done, time to move on. But I would like to point out that the same people calling Atlanta’s pro sports teams ‘losers’ are the same people still wearing hats and shirts from a title won in 1980.
ChippersLoveChild
May 31st, 2011
3:37 pm
@allen981?
We are playing golf and tennis outdoors in January? Because I seem to remember an ice/snow storm that kept us all trapy indoors for a week in January? What Atlanta were you living in? We don’t have beautiful weather in the winter either. You must have just moved here.
Lost Hope
May 31st, 2011
3:37 pm
I bet Mayor Kasim Reed would have supported the black majority suppored NBA team of the Hawks and city of Atlanta!!!! But no way would he support the white sport of hockey!!!!
ATL Observer
May 31st, 2011
3:38 pm
STILL waiting for someone to list those magical 40-45 concerts that the NHL deprived us of…………
Dontavius Supremo
May 31st, 2011
3:39 pm
I went to several Thrashers games early on, hoping to like hockey. It didnlt work. Not only that, but the management at Phillips seems intent on breaking uour ear drums. Whatever happened to conversation during a game? You can do it at outside football, baseball, soccer (futbol, excuse me) and most other pro events. At an Atlanta hockey match you spend most of you time with your hands over your ears. And don’t even get me started about those nimbos with Canadian flags draped all over them. Geez.
Lost Hope
May 31st, 2011
3:40 pm
You know its right!!!! He would have been out in the media bringing up major support talking about how important the sport of Hawks are to the city of Atlanta and how important the revenues are to the city of Atlanta.
Yet….how many times have the Hawks actually made the playoffs? I dont remember them actually being a winning team until the owners CARED ABOUT THE TEAM!!!! THE OWNERS DID NOT CARE ABOUT THE HOCKEY TEAM AND PUT ALL THEIR MONEY TOWARDS THE HAWKS AND NOTHING TOWARDS PUTTING A WINNING TEAM ON THE ICE FOR A HOCKEY TEAM!!!!
There is no way the City of Atlanta, Mayor Kasim Reed or any other major black figure head in this state would have EVER let the Hawks leave the city of Atlanta!!! EVER!!!!
King Tut
May 31st, 2011
3:40 pm
The sad thing is that “Lost Hope” is probably right, but the media doesn’t dare mention it.
ChippersLoveChild
May 31st, 2011
3:41 pm
@BigBear
I agree. I can deal with the cold and know how to, but knowing what the weather is like and having put up with it for many years still doesn’t mean I enjoy it and look forward to having to deal with it. Nor would my wife or kids, that all holds true for these players too.. or at least most. As for Atlanta being a blip… no.. I’m sure some have to work on selling their homes, finding another home, moving all of their belongings, etc… Atlanta won’t be blip for maybe even another year for some of these players. There is another side to the story, the players, some at least who live here, now have to uproot their lives and that doesn’t happen over night.
WHY?
May 31st, 2011
3:41 pm
Enter your comments here
BartenderBart
May 31st, 2011
3:42 pm
HandOvThrawn – Sure the arena is terribly located for people in Marietta. By the same token, the BiLo Center in Greenville is in a terrible location for the people of Charleston. You can’t argue with the placement of Gwinnett Center…centrally located in a fast-growing county, mere minutes from Lake Lanier, the Mall of Georgia, the Gwinnett Braves, downtown Atlanta and the various attractions there… you’re right, it’s a terrible location.
JayTee
May 31st, 2011
3:44 pm
Great article Jeff; excellently written.
Elmo
May 31st, 2011
3:45 pm
It is a dying niche Sport – like NASCAR and the NBA. The reality is that people in the Atlanta – Metro – do not like it. Let the marketplace speak. In this case – it hollered.
Overdrv
May 31st, 2011
3:45 pm
Go Jets !!!!
yellow britches
May 31st, 2011
3:48 pm
Blue land says it all for the fans. But really, who gives a rat’s ass? We lose another group of over paid, pampered whatevers. How can anyone with an ounce of sense, call this “Atlanta’s team”? No native products on the roster. No coaches and no minor league feeder system from the area. I have never understood the affection some people have for hockey in the south. Makes no sense except for transplants from the tundra.
LL
May 31st, 2011
3:48 pm
another canadian from Vancouver here curious to see what the locals in Atlanta have to say about this. I’ve been to Winnipeg a couple of times unfortunately and yes it is an outpost, but it’s a hockey mad outpost that will fill the rink, show up for rallies, and wear their colors on their sleeves.
When Bettman does pass away one day, I’ll be surprised if you count on both hands the number of true friends there. He has to be one of the most hated men on the planet. NOBODY in hockey likes the guy. As with franchise owners, the league commissioner should have a pretty good idea of what the sport is about. Hockey hasn’t that for a long time in Bettman, and Atlanta unfortunately has never had that where hockey is concerned. It’s tough to support a company like ASG with no local interest in the community much less the sport.
Having said this, I’ve lived 40 years in a town that has never won a professional sports title (OK North American Soccer League aside in 1979). I’ve lived with a Canucks team that let’s face, were an embarrassment for MANY years, and a basketball franchise that was also managed into the ground with no chance of success here (even though we were averaging 12K-14K fans per night for basketball) so I feel your pain there. At the end of the day though, there is a watershed difference between a discerning fan (which it appears the folks of Atlanta would be) and a heart and soul fan. We may not always make the smartest choices with our money, but it isn’t about that. It’s about believing in the guys on the ice (or the court or field or whatever) and believing in the sport enough to say “I’m supporting this, good or bad”. Let’s face it, it’s kind of like a marriage in lots of ways. If you’re getting into it simply for what you are going to get out of it, chances are you won’t get much out of it.
There’s a reason baseball hasn’t expanded north of the border either, other than Toronto. The cities here probably won’t bother supporting it enough to make it financially viable. That’s our loss. Hockey is your loss. I hope you guys do get another chance, because I think you are a great market, but you’re going to probably have to prove it first.
D Ole Hoops Coach
May 31st, 2011
3:49 pm
Al13: I think your last paragraph makes a really true point. During the whole time the Thrashers have been up for sale, I have heard no one talk about it at work and it has never come up when talking with friends. I honestly only know two people in Metro Atlanta that have given the Thrashers a second thought. They have been 11 year season ticket holders and really looked forward to going to each game.
It is probably a good thing that they are going to a place that actually likes Hockey. I hope it works out well for Winnipeg, but I probably will never look to see how they are doing next season. If another hockey team comes here in 5 or 16 years, I won’t go to their games either.
LetDownAgain
May 31st, 2011
3:49 pm
Just want to thank Jeff for a well written piece and second those who vow not to support the Hawks or any event at Philips. Put me on that list.
Some Guy
May 31st, 2011
3:50 pm
It’s too bad your team was run into the ground by Waddell and friends, but this column was amateurish. Atlanta, you deserved a better team and a better hockey columnist.
3 Questions:
May 31st, 2011
3:50 pm
1. Who cares?
2. Do they need help packing?
3. Can they take the Hawks and Dream with them?
Chris
May 31st, 2011
3:52 pm
This is a pity but I just think it proves that Atlanta is not an NHL market. Im sure that there are great NHL and hockey fans there I just don’t think that there are enough. Even in the playoff year there were no fans coming to the games. Raleigh, San Jose and Florida are all mentioned as markets that are sub par to Atlanta. Yes there are better leadership in those markets, that only gets you so far. I really just don’t think there are enough people who care in that market. The Carolina Hurricanes have won a Stanley Cup, they have been much more competitive in about the same time frame that Atlanta did nothing. Raleigh is only a fraction of the size of Atlanta. The big difference here is that people in Raleigh have nothing else to follow outside of college sports. You have plenty of outlets to enjoy sports in Atlanta, the Thrashers were just the least important of all. Yes its sad, yes Im disappointed as a Hurricanes fan that we won’t be able to road trip to Atlanta and sit on the ice for $20 bucks anymore but it just boils down to not enough people care about the Thrashers.
Big Bear
May 31st, 2011
3:53 pm
@ChippersLoveChild:
Sure, OK, a move like this does affect the players’ personal lives, but moving around is just part of being a proffesional athlete. A move like this is far, far less destabilizing than being traded, demoted to the minors, or being put on waivers–all of which can happen very suddenly, with players typically knowing nothing about it until the decision has been made.
And when a franchise folds and players are subject to a dispersal draft…well, that’s no fun, either…
Puck Like A Porn Star
May 31st, 2011
3:54 pm
My mistake, I got the Titanic’s launching date confused with its maiden voyage date.
Adios Atlanta
May 31st, 2011
3:54 pm
All the sob stories … from fans that never went to games & writers who could care less about hockey. If the writer of this story was not a season ticket holder than he was part of the problem, stop blaming others.
Ownership may have lied & Bettman may have lied but Atlanta will not support its own NHL team. It’s not about corporate sponsorships, it’s about fans paying to watch hockey in Atlanta. I’ve been to the games many times but only because MY team was playing the Thrashers. And the same goes for many other true hockey fans that relocated South … they went to a game to root against the Thrashers. You think I’m going to stop rooting for my home team after being a fan for 40 years, an original six team, just because I moved to Atlanta … hardly.
Atlanta sports fans follow & spend their money on the Falcons, NASCAR, UGA, the Braves, & the Hawks. Sure there’s a small base of true Atlanta Thrashers fans but not nearly enough to support this team. Add to that the city of Atlanta itself … not exactly a pedestrian-friendly city, in fact, it’s down right dangerous! Walk 3 blocks from Philips at 10pm & you can get killed … real nice city.
helmet head
May 31st, 2011
3:54 pm
There goes our chances of having Winter Classic at Turner Field
Winnipeg weather today–56degrees and rain. Enjoy
Jim Osterman
May 31st, 2011
3:56 pm
Gwinnett Gladiator fever! Catch it!
helmet head
May 31st, 2011
3:58 pm
Adios Atlanta — Take I85 to Hartsfield and go back to where you came from!
1eyedJack
May 31st, 2011
3:59 pm
Until you get black people interested in hockey you’ll always have a problem with hockey downtown. If another chance comes along for a team put it in the suburbs where the support is.
Chris
May 31st, 2011
3:59 pm
Are you kidding me? “Atlanta didn’t fail?????” Really? Really? You were 28th out of 30 teams in attendance in 2010/2011 and 2009/2010. The best you’ve done since 2007 was 22nd. And “Atlanta didn’t fail?” You’re nuts!!!
WhoCares
May 31st, 2011
3:59 pm
Now if they can just move the Hawks out of the city, all the dead weight will be gone. I can live with the Bulldogs, Falcons and Braves just fine. Move the Hawks to East St. Louis where they along with the other basketball thuggery will be fiine. They can rap all night and not get in trouble.
Former Hawk Fan
May 31st, 2011
4:01 pm
“Winnipeg Hawks” has a nice ring to it….
Cecil34
May 31st, 2011
4:01 pm
This hopefully will permanently end Atlanta’s 39 year, off and on relationship with NHL hockey. It obviously doesn’t work, so let’s move on and forget it as a failed experiment twice-over.
ASG
May 31st, 2011
4:02 pm
Chris – You’re missing the point. The ownership did not invest in their own product to make it attractive to consumers. Worse yet, they never wanted to own the franchise. Look at the Falcons as an example. The owener invested in the team and people pay to watch them play.
ForgetAboutIt
May 31st, 2011
4:02 pm
Wait for about 4 or 5 years and see if Arthur Blank doesn’t get the Falcons out of downtown Atlanta. They will still be the Atlanta Falcons but playing in Gwinnett. Downtown is a dump, and people get tired of being panhandled with the turn of every corner. And forget that hope of getting that 1% transportation vote passed, it will not happen, so forget Marta coming to the Northern Suburbs.
ChrisH
May 31st, 2011
4:03 pm
Just got a mass email from the Atlanta Spirit idiocracy explaining the moving of the team, and there is a grammatical error in the SECOND PARAGRAPH. If that doesn’t symbolize the ineptitude of these morons, I don’t know what does.
Me Ted
May 31st, 2011
4:04 pm
“Atlanta has lost an NHL expansion team to a Canadian outpost for the second time. ”
and
“It’s going back to a city that it left 15 years ago and that has grown by about 60,000 people and a couple of doughnut shops since.”
Well done Mr. Schultz. Your lack of professionalism is duly noted. Well, at least your utter dross won’t be confused for journalism. Please continue to enjoy your perpetual obscurity.
PJM
May 31st, 2011
4:04 pm
This is a pathetic group of owners and they will never succeed in this business. I personally will not miss the Thrashers at all but I will miss seeing the other NHL teams, especially the Pittsburgh Pens.
james
May 31st, 2011
4:06 pm
Very well written. I never knew much about Beltman, but if all this is true he never gave a rip about this organization and his attempts to market the Thrashers were feeble at best. For comparison purposes look at Arthur Blank, an owner who is 100% vested in Atlanta and 100% committed to the Falcons. The organization was on life support with a custodian of an owner in the Smith family, but look what has happend since then! Almost all home games have been sold out since 2002, DESPITE the disasters of 2003 and 2007 – weathering the Vick storm and ensuring the organization landed on its feet. The difference is….he cares. He is a businessman and he applied the Home Depot model successfully to an NFL team. The Falcons were truly brought back from the brink and you can credit it to their top down management approach. An owner of this magnitude could have turned even the Thrashers around. The Falcons are living proof that a little creative marketing and promotions along with decent player development can turn the moribound into something very special. Thrashers ownership did NONE of this. While the Braves and Falcons somehow make me intrigued and engaged and wanting to enjoy their respective “products”, the Hawks and Thrashers just don’t give me reasons to be excited. I just don’t feel drawn to Philips the same way I feel drawn to Turner Field and the Georgia Dome -and its not entirely related to lack of winning on the ice or the court. If there is ever the glimmer of hope for another NHL franchise, which I believe there can be, I think it would be a very wise for the team to be based in Gwinnett or North Fulton.
Brandon
May 31st, 2011
4:11 pm
Schultz and other Atlantans can blame the ownership group and the NHL all they want, and in some regard it’s very fair to do so. The owners failed the fans by not putting a product on the ice that was worthy of the ticket prices they asked for. If they tried at all, it wasn’t an honest, hard effort. You don’t put a bare minimum team on the ice with horrible coaching and 1 ’star’ player (personally, I think Kovalchuk was and is a bum) and think people are going to come to games. If it wasn’t an outright blowout on the scoreboard, it was on the ice. A 3-2 score often doesn’t reflect tilted ice all that well.
I’ll never forget my first Thrashers game after moving here from Detroit. It was against Detroit. There were Wings fans 10:1, a sea of red and white which made me feel like I was back at Joe Louis Arena and the Thrashers were booed on home ice by the sellout crowd. LOUDLY. I was rooting for the Wings, but doing that is shameful. The fans are as much to blame as the owners. There’s plenty to go around. I can’t stand Bettman, but you can’t blame the league. The Thrashers had finally turned a corner after ridding themselves of Kovalchuk and picking up a team of quality players. The real shame is that in a season or two, they would have FINALLY had a great product for Atlanta.
Good luck Winnipeg. Hope the 2nd time around is better than the 1st…. but I wouldn’t feel too bad for them, their last club isn’t fairing any better since they left for the desert.
Hugh Jardon
May 31st, 2011
4:13 pm
J-E-T-S, JETS! JETS! JETS! Thanks a million Atlanta!!!
Bean Counter
May 31st, 2011
4:13 pm
Enter your comments here
no hockey love anymore
May 31st, 2011
4:14 pm
Hillbilly D –
If you don’t follow the Giants, please don’t pretend to know what you’re talking about just because you watched the Braves play the Giants in Candlestick ON TV over a decade ago. The reason why it was “empty” was because Candlestick was awful, not the fan base or team. Candlestick is an old ugly stadium, not easily accessible from SF, and riddled with swirling and gusty winds. They move to SOMA in SF and they pack the park every single game day or night weekend or weeknight. SF Giants had NEVER won a championship until last year (and barely made the playoffs, too). So please don’t give me this crap about the reason why SF supports the Giants is because they are “contenders”. After Posey went down that ended the dream this year but we still pack the house wearing giant’s shirts, black beards and panda hats. It’s pathetic that even after 14 straight division titles by the Braves the fans in Atlanta only sometimes sell out the stadium only when the Cubs, Red Sox, Phillies, and Yankees visit and outnumber braves fans 3 to 1.
Brendan
May 31st, 2011
4:17 pm
Eleven pages of comments, and counting … guess there’s just no interest in hockey, eh?
Don Waddell … you will be forever remembered as the man who drove away interest in hockey in Atlanta, GA. Ownership, you are responsible for Don Waddell’s legacy. You left him in charge, and gave him no budgets with which to work. Ownership never told Waddell who to draft, however. So, Waddell isn’t insulated from blame. He must own his failures, including never really putting a Tier I goalie in net, for over a decade. Waddell never had anything resembling two Tier I blueliners, at any point in the franchise. And Waddell never fielded a team that that was 4 lines deep. Maybe, once upon a time, we had three lines (2007). And even then, the team couldn’t manage a playoff win, even though Waddell sat on the Rules Committee that determined the direction of the league, post-Lockout.
To the Thrashers, I wish them the best of luck in Manitoba next season. I’ll be watching them on Center Ice. To my fellow regular hockey bloggers, I enjoyed the time with you tremendously. You were outstanding readers and responders. It really was some of the greatest hockey discussions going around town.
To the ex-owners, I just want to say … that I hope nothing you ever CARED about gets neglected and abandoned in the manner in which you ran the Thrashers. I’m sorry you guys couldn’t get along, and sued each other into oblivion.
To the Fans, you really didn’t do anything wrong. The NHL didn’t give this market anything resembling a chance to succeed. You were RIGHT to demand accountability. Too bad, the fans never got that accountability from ownership.
To the NHL, Gosh fellas. Why’d ya put a team in Atlanta, GA without ever properly vetting the ownership groups? Ted Turner was gone almost as soon as he acquired the team. AOL-Time-Warner didn’t know what to do with a hockey team, and they sold it to the Octocluster. And the Octocluster never wanted it. At no point, did the NHL step in to run the team or attempt to salvage it. Maybe, they didn’t think the market was salvageable? Maybe they just wanted the the $60 million relocation fee. Any way you slice and dice it, like Jeff Schultz said, the Atlanta market didn’t stand a chance. If the NHL ever endeavors to put another team here, they’d better do their homework. Really, how could they NOT KNOW BETTER than to engage a group of basketball afficianado, who had no interest in hockey, and think, “Everything should be SUPER?” That’s a lack of due diligence on the part of the NHL. Oh well.
Bygones.
Engineer
May 31st, 2011
4:17 pm
Strange, the Thrashers were the only thing that stoked any interest in the NHL for me. Congrats to the NHL on alienating folks in the Atlanta market. It isn’t like this is the first time the NHL has done this. So yeah I think I can speak for a lot of folks down here in that I think I’m done with hockey, especially the NHL. Frankly the fighting is the only thing that makes watching hockey slightly less boring than watching soccer or watching paint dry.
Gary B.
May 31st, 2011
4:18 pm
I will bend over each and every fan in Atlanta and toss their salad anytime they want. That was fun.
bolt
May 31st, 2011
4:19 pm
The model just doesn’t work in Atlanta for sports teams of this caliber (or ineptitude). Teams in Atlanta thrive when they provide success and trail off in attendance (and profit/loss) when they lose. The Thrashers were not going to survive in this market without having any significant success over the past ten+ years. I feel sorry for the team, players, and City, but if you can’t put significant numbers of fans in the seats, give them reason to be in those seats (wins?), or have an ownership group that will put their time, effort, and money behind the success of the team, then it’s time to move on. BTW, the same may be said about Winnipeg in about five years and possibly Phoenix in the next two.
Sunshine Falcon
May 31st, 2011
4:19 pm
These outsiders who own these ATL teams, really never cared, that much. Only about the money.
FSUFalcon
May 31st, 2011
4:21 pm
we shoujuld never lose anythign to canada…if it werent for us they’d be part of england…
Canada is a joke
May 31st, 2011
4:25 pm
@FSUFalcon – I think Canada may still be part of England…or Great Britain…or the United Kingdom…or whatever the hell you want to call it. The queen is on their money and they celebrate Boxing Day and Victoria Day. They don’t even know if they’re independent.