Winnipeg Whiteout: How the Jets Started Their Iconic Playoff Tradition
The Winnipeg Jets are known to have one of the NHL's loudest crowds. They also have one of the best playoff traditions, but there's more to it than wearing white.
WINNIPEG – The snow may have melted in Winnipeg, but downtown was still covered in white in late April.
When the Winnipeg Jets faced off against the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 3 of the first round, it marked the first time the team hosted a playoff game with fans since 2019. The Whiteout returned.
Leading up to the weekend matinee, the vibe throughout the blue-collar city of 800,000-plus is similar to that of a small college town. Local establishments showed their support, with “Go Jets Go” broadcasted on just about every LED outdoor sign in sight. And folks went all-out with their Whiteout attire. Think white-colored Jets merchandise with Halloween costume accessories mixed in — like ski goggles, wigs and painter coveralls.
In many ways, the downtown buzz felt celebratory. It wasn’t because the Jets squeaked into the post-season but rather that Winnipeg fans don’t take moments like these for granted. They know what it’s like to have this ripped away from them, and they’re proving they belong in the big leagues.
“If you’re measuring the pride of a city on a scale of one to 10, Winnipeg would be at 76,” said Todd Woodcroft, the Jets’ assistant coach from 2016 to 2020. “The Whiteout is almost like a big middle finger to the world. It’s sort of like a, ‘Hey, this is not a small market team. We’ve arrived.’ ”
Thirty minutes before puck drop, the tightly-packed Canada Life Centre concourse morphed into a house-party vibe. A DJ stationed outside section 124 blasted Let's Get Loud by Jennifer Lopez, and an impromptu mini dance floor broke out. The vibe was contagious as fans moved to the beat like they were in a nightclub.
Fifteen minutes later, the dancers headed to their seats. It was showtime.
Fans spun playoff rally towels like wind turbines as a sellout crowd of 15,000-plus produced thunderous ‘Go Jets Go’ chants.
When the Jets took the ice, the pressure-cooker crowd popped. Whiteout activated.
“The start of that game was probably one of the coolest experiences of my life,” said Jets defenseman Neal Pionk after that game, where the Jets came back to force overtime but lost in the second extra frame, 5-4.
Throughout the last three decades, the Winnipeg Whiteout has become a bucket-list event for hockey traditionalists. What started out as a shot-in-the-dark marketing ploy has evolved into a storied tradition that symbolizes how a market like Winnipeg, the smallest city in the league, can house an NHL team.
The Whiteout originates from the Jets’ first-round series against the Calgary Flames in 1987. Ahead of the playoffs, the Jets’ marketing and public relations committee gathered with the objective of countering Calgary’s ‘C of Red.’
“We were just thinking like, what could we do to blow people's minds?” said Lori Summers, the Jets’ director of community relations at the time.
The initial idea was to have fans wear blue, red and white. However, nobody in the room was all that enthused by that. They soon pivoted to wearing blue and white.
But Rod Palson — creative director at Palmer Jarvis Communications, an ad agency that the Jets were clients of — believed even that was too complicated. Palson suggested that, for simplicity’s sake, fans should just wear white.
“Everybody has a white T-shirt in their closet or their drawer that they can grab,” Palson said. “In those days, the home teams wore white. So it just made sense.”
From there, things evolved quickly.
“There was this momentum and this excitement that started ticking up in the room,” Summers said.
The Jets quickly underwent an all-out media blitz to get the word out. The team sent out a media release and took out full-page newspaper ads, with the slogan ‘Good Guys Wear White,’ which was coined by Palson, at the forefront.
The staff at Palmer Jarvis produced a promotional radio jingle — a parody of Everybody Have Fun Tonight by Wang Chung that reworked the lyrics to Everyone Wear White Tonight.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WODTKr52vmU[/embed]
Ahead of the inaugural Whiteout on Game 3, April 11, 1987, the organization had no idea whether or not the idea was gaining popularity.
When they saw fans decked out from head to toe in white — donning coveralls, tuxedo jackets and facepaint — and cheering loudly well before warmups began, everybody in the Jets organization was taken aback.
“When we first walked out for warmups, the building was already completely full, and it was totally white,” said Paul MacLean, a star forward with the Jets that season who later became an NHL coach. “It was actually stunning to see. It was like, ‘Wow, this is different. This is cool.’ ”
From there, the Winnipeg Whiteout took on a life of its own and organically became a post-season tradition.
“I remember being in the locker room of the arena an hour and a half before the game when they first opened the doors to the arena, and the place was shaking,” said Keith Tkachuk, who played for the Jets/Coyotes franchise from 1992 to 2001. “It was so fricken loud. I couldn’t believe it. It was just this crazy atmosphere. It gave me chills, to be honest.”
“If you’re measuring the pride of a city on a scale of one to 10, Winnipeg would be at 76.” - Todd Woodcroft
To understand what fuels the Whiteout, you must understand Winnipeg.
“When Winnipeg grabs onto something, they go all out,” Summers said. “They redefine what it means to get behind your team.”
In a way, the Whiteout is a collective expression of a market that, if it weren’t for its rapid, passionate fan base, would never ever be in consideration to house an NHL team.
“It’s got a small, blue-collar town atmosphere, and they’ve got the (second) smallest building in the league,” Tkachuk said. “It all plays into them being underdogs and that sort of Winnipeg versus the world mentality.”
Despite assembling some promising teams, the Jets 1.0 — who joined the league by way of the WHA-NHL merger in 1979 — never advanced past the second round of the playoffs. Despite strong fan support, a declining Canadian dollar and a poor arena leasing deal contributed to Winnipeg’s struggles to keep up with the NHL’s growing economic landscape in the mid- to late-1990s.
The team was sold and relocated to Arizona after the 1995-96 season. That made for a somber farewell tour, which ended with the Jets losing Game 6 of their first-round series against the Detroit Red Wings on home ice.
Rich Nairn, the Jets’ director of media relations during that final season, remembers how hard it was for the fans.
“I remember the team landing at the airport around 2 a.m. after Game 5 in Detroit," said Nairn. "We came through the terminal, and when we started down the escalator to baggage claim, you could see hundreds of Jets fans all wearing white and chanting ‘Go Jets Go!’ No one stopped the players or asked for an autograph. They just wanted to show their support and appreciation for the players.”
Andrew Paterson, host of Winnipeg Sports Talk, says the Jets’ departure ripped the heart out of the city.
“Our identity as a smaller, underdog city that was able to compete with the big boys was gone,” Paterson said. “And at the time, it felt like we were losing something forever.”
“When Winnipeg grabs onto something, they go all out.” - Lori Summers
Nobody could have ever anticipated the Jets returning. But in fairy tale-esque fashion, Winnipeg got an NHL team back in the city 15 years after the team left for Phoenix. True North Sports and Entertainment – led by Mark Chipman and David Thomson — announced the purchase of the Atlanta Thrashers and the relocation of the team to Winnipeg on May 31, 2011.
A piece of the city's identity was restored. Before the games began, Winnipeg fans made a statement when buying all 13,000 season ticket packages for sale in 17 minutes.
“While I had no doubt the ‘Drive to 13,000’ would reach its destination, the remarkable speed at which it got there certifies the fans’ hunger for NHL hockey and their commitment to True North’s initiatives,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in a statement at the time.
When the Jets started playing games again, Canada Life Centre morphed into an imposing environment in the early years, even as the team was rebuilding. Four years into the Jets 2.0 existence, playoff hockey returned to Winnipeg – as did the Whiteout.
“If there had not been a Whiteout when the Jets made the playoffs for the first time in 2015, it would have been bedlam,” Palson said. “Winnipegers get really attached to stuff they love and stuff that is important to them. The average fan would have felt it was a real slap in the face if the Whiteout wasn’t brought back.”
The Jets hosted Games 3 and 4 en route to a 4-0 series loss to the Anaheim Ducks in the first round that year. While the series was never particularly close, the passion fuelling the Whiteout was the real headliner. Lee Stempniak scored the first-ever Jets 2.0 playoff goal on home ice, sending the then-named MTS Centre into a frenzy.
“Every time the goal is mentioned, or I’m asked about it, it puts me right back in that unforgettable moment,” said Stempniak, who is now the Coyotes’ director of player development.
Stempniak said he vividly remembers the entire experience.
“The arena was loud and raucous from the start of warmups, and then there was an eruption, unlike any other crowd I’ve ever experienced,” said Stempniak, who split his 911-game NHL career between 10 teams. “We knew it would be nuts in the MTS Centre, but that blew away any expectations. I remember being in the dressing room and my ears ringing from the noise.”
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt2aMOtEA14[/embed]
The Whiteout would return in full force for the Jets’ 2017-18 run, the closest Winnipeg has ever been to hoisting a Stanley Cup.
“Momentum was building toward those playoffs, and it felt like a tidal wave,” Woodcroft said. “But I don’t think anybody was prepared for what ended up happening. People were expecting a tidal wave, and instead, they got a tsunami.”
That tsunami kept going until the Vegas Golden Knights stopped the Jets in the Western Conference final.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW3oV52-9-M[/embed]
That run would spark four more playoff appearances in five years — although COVID-19 interrupted a Whiteout from taking place during the 2019-20 and 2020-21 playoff runs. Perhaps that made the 2022-23 Whiteout all the more special.
“From the first strides in warmup to even the whole third period, It was electric,” said Jets defenseman Brenden Dillon. “I think that just says something about the city of Winnipeg.”
Winnipeg’s fan base is the crux of the city being able to have an NHL team. And the players know it. That's why they pull the fans even more into the fight, like when Blake Wheeler scored in Game 4 and fired up the fans standing at the glass — seemingly telling them that the journey to a win started now.
These fans from the prairies are as knowledgable as they are passionate, shown by their creative chants over the years — ”Crosby’s better” toward Alexander Ovechkin, “Silver Medal” toward Ryan Miller after losing to Canada in the Olympics, and “You’re a backup,” to former Jets backup Laurent Brossoit.
The thing is, these fans are starting to get impatient. Whether ramifications from COVID-19 are the only reason for it or not, the Jets have not been selling out the last two years. This season’s average attendance of 14,045 was the team’s lowest of any season without capacity restrictions at any point.
The franchise has now started a ‘Forever Winnipeg’ marketing campaign, implying that the organization needs more from the fans in order to keep the team in Winnipeg forever.
“Against all odds, what once was lost, we found once more,” a narrator said in a ‘Forever Winnipeg’ video. “So is Winnipeg an NHL city? You better believe it.
“But it takes all of us.”
As evidenced by the NHL’s return to the city, if you build it – Winnipeg fans will come. And right now, the Jets have just three series wins to their name since 2011-12, and rumors swirl about whether some of the team’s top players will return or whether a rebuild is a way to go.
With that, nobody knows how soon we’ll see the Winnipeg Whiteout again. But one thing’s for sure: the fans make an NHL team in Winnipeg possible.