NHL playoff fever had the streets of downtown Winnipeg buzzing on Saturday, with thousands of fans flocking to watch their home team in Game 1 of their first-round playoff series.
On the ice at the Canada Life Centre, the Winnipeg Jets are facing the St. Louis Blues in the first match of their best-of-seven series.
Outside the downtown arena in the hours leading up to the 5 p.m. puck drop, Jets fans painted a stretch of Donald Street white for the first whiteout street party of the season, a sold-out event with a capacity of 5,000. Another 1,200 were expected for the Party in the Plaza at True North Square, which is also sold out for Game 1.
The spring whiteout brought fans from near and far, including one who travelled roughly 15,000 kilometres to watch the Jets play.
“To come to a Jets game — not only just a Jets game but one of the playoff games — gee, you couldn’t ask for anything better,” said Rob Psaila, a firefighter from Melbourne, Australia.
He became a Jets fan during a visit to Canada four years ago, visiting through firefighter friends. Winnipeg was the first Canadian city he visited back then, and the warm welcome he got from locals made him feel like he was at home.
So “it was just natural for me to start supporting the Winnipeg Jets,” he said. “It’s just like my home football team.”
But one thing was missing for him: a theme song for the team and about the team. So he adapted Melbourne’s football fan song to the Jets.
“A fighting fury, we’re from Winnipeg/ In any weather you will see us with a grin/ Risking head and shin/ If we’re behind then never mind/ We’ll fight and fight to win!” Psaila sang, giving a rendition of the song he adapted for the Jets.
For Winnipeggers, it comes as a surprise people in Australia follow ice hockey, he said, but in Melbourne, there are fans of every NHL team.
“Melbourne is a sporting capital of Australia. We’ll get 30,000 people out to two bugs racing up a wall,” he joked.
Psaila is planning to literally follow the Jets on their first-round run, staying in Winnipeg for Game 2 on Monday and then going to St. Louis for Game 3 on Thursday.
“Let’s hope the Jets get in there and give them a good smashing,” he said. “We are going to do a fantastic job, I have no doubt at all.”
Though he didn’t come quite as far, Calgary’s Brad Yakiwchuck also said he was in town to see the Jets “beat the wheels off the Blues” on Saturday.
Yakiwchuck, who has been a fan of the Jets since the team announced its return to Winnipeg, said this is the most excited he’s seen the team’s fans in a long time, in part after an impressive regular season that closed with a franchise record of 116 points and saw the Jets clinch their first Presidents’ Trophy for top regular-season record in the league.
“I think if there has ever been a year for us to win the [Stanley] Cup, this is the one,” Yakiwchuck said. “I really hope this is the year.”
Like Yakiwchuck, Jeff Baquiran said this is the best time to be a Jets fan after the team rose to the top of the Western Conference.
“It is clicking on all cylinders, the time is perfect,” Baquiran said.
While he expects the road ahead in the playoffs to be tough, Baquiran is also confident the team will win the series by the sixth game.
“We got four good lines coming up on the ice, solid defence … this is the team to do it,” he said.
Mike McDonald went to about 35 Jets games during the regular season, where he has seen how team players have not only scored but also looked after each other’s back in the ice rink.
“They play the right way,” McDonald said. “When one guy is not playing up … somebody comes up and gets that goal.”
He has been watching hockey for 55 years and said bringing the Stanley Cup to Winnipeg would be “unbelievable.”
