FOR TRUE-BLUE JETS FANS, HAWERCHUK'S SWEATER RETIREMENT IS HARDLY DUCKY

Gabriel Desjardins of behindthenet.ca, who's a Winnipegger born, shares some thoughts on the eve of Dale Hawerchuk's sweater retirement -- which is taking place in Glendale, Ariz., not Winnipeg, Manitoba, where the magic actually happened.

I may not remember the birthdays of friends and relatives, but I do remember the date I went to my first Winnipeg Jets game: February 18, 1983. It almost seems like yesterday that I put on my blue, white and red #10 Dale Hawerchuk jersey and sat down at the Winnipeg Arena to watch the Jets play the Boston Bruins.

Hawerchuk was just a teenage kid from Oshawa, but it's no hyperbole to say that from the instant he was drafted #1 overall by the Winnipeg Jets, he embodied the hopes and dreams of thousands of kids like me. Those hopes were dashed by repeated playoff losses to Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers, and the ultimate transfer of the franchise to Phoenix in 1996. So it is particularly galling that the Phoenix Coyotes decided to retire Hawerchuk's jersey in red and white this April 5th.

Dale Hawerchuk retired from the NHL in 1997, and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2001. Why would Phoenix wait so long to raise his number to the rafters? The truth is that no team has retired the number of a player who never played for them, and Phoenix never intended to honor Hawerchuk. But the Coyotes have hemorrhaged money since they moved, largely because they have not yet won a playoff series. Retiring #10 is just a ploy to fill the arena by inventing history that the franchise simply does not have.

What makes this even worse is that Wayne Gretzky both owns and coaches the Coyotes. If you were a Winnipeg Jets fan, you can't help but hate Gretzky for being the annual roadblock to the Jets' playoff hopes. If you were a Canadian hockey fan, Gretzky's the guy whose popularity pushed the league to expand to places like Phoenix where nobody cares about the game. The NHL never felt any need to protect its Canadian teams, particularly those that were grudgingly admitted to the league after the WHA folded in 1979. But it cared enough about the Sun Belt to use revenue sharing to prop up half a dozen failing teams.

I'm all for honoring Dale Hawerchuk's career — and his induction into the Hall of Fame accomplished that. Since the NHL has scrubbed Winnipeg from its books forever in favor of the faceless Phoenix franchise, it can't market itself using Winnipeg's legacy anymore. The Coyotes are engaging in a transparently cynical act employed by failing franchises that attract few new fans and alienate many real long-time fans.

Here's hoping Dale Hawerchuk is remembered as he always was: Winnipeg Jets, #10…