This full-page ad ran in the Tuesday edition of the Winnipeg Free Press, confirming that the retail pizza industry in Canada will gladly turn its marketing to the "extra cheese" setting in order to sell to fragile hockey fans. (See: Boston, er, Montreal pizza.)
Domino's Pizza of Canada president Mike Schlater is a Winnipeg Jets (and Detroit Red Wings) fan, and the man who opened the first franchise outside the U.S. in 1983. What's the deal with this ad? From the Windsor Star:
He thought up the idea last week while exercising on an elliptical trainer but ran into trouble over the wording with the newspaper since there's still a lot of speculation about whether Winnipeg will get an NHL team.
By adding "we will" welcome you back and leaving it a bit more ambiguous, Schlater got the ad run Tuesday and will follow it up with a full-page ad in the Winnipeg Sun Wednesday.
It's a truly epic attempt at pandering to puckheads. Was there ever a concern that Winnipeg had forgotten about the Jets? Or that the city wouldn't welcome back an NHL team? It's not as if they're going to look the Phoenix Coyotes up and down, mutter something like "Lauri Korpikoski? Meh …" and hand them over to Kansas City.
(If anything, perhaps Domino's should have taken a stand for the Winnipeg parks system in light of Ilya Bryzgalov's slandering.)
Of course, in the end, this is a Domino's Pizza ad advocating for the relocation of an NHL team to Winnipeg. Wonder how the U.S. chain's Glendale affiliates feel about that?
In other Return of the Jets news: No Teemu in the 'Peg. Boo.