Unlike the New York Jets football team, which once played in Shea Stadium near LaGuardia Airport, the Winnipeg Jets can claim no such connection to airplanes or an airport. The team’s founder, Benny Hatskin, reportedly simply liked the name, and besides, he already owned a junior team with that name in the Western Canada Hockey League. So when Winnipeg became a charter member of the professional World Hockey Association, a rival to the NHL, in 1972, it too was called the Jets. Better yet, Hatskin talked the league into contributing toward a $1 million bonus used to sign Bobby Hull, “The Golden Jet,” away from the NHL.
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