Our city has been all-a-twitter (and ON Twitter, natch) about the recent purchase of the Atanta's Thrashers hockey team; and being a Good Canuck, I too am way-too-excited about having the NHL in our fine city once more.

Yep, I grew up watching our beloved Jets from the 70's to the 90's... and attended, with 35,000 other fans, the "Save the Jets" Rally back in 1996 in a vain attempt to prevent their sale to Phoenix. I even have a photo of daughter on hubby's shoulders that appeared on the front page of the newspaper the next day. Sure, we were not much more than a dot in a long shot amongst thousands, but I FOUND us!

Since that fateful day I like many others on too many occasions, got my hopes up just to be dashed again with rumours of our team returning, then not returning to Canada.

Then this year it really looked like it was going to finally happen. Hubby, the pessimist, wasn't so sure. Me, the optimist, followed TSN's Jets Meter online for months, watching the dial inch it's way up and up and up... until the wonderful day it was announced that Atlanta's team was sold to our Great White North (er, "True North"). Well, wonderful for us, not so much for Atlanta - with whom I could entirely empathize; we went through the exact same heart-breaking situation 15 years ago.

But  now the team was bought.

The MTS Centre was sold out (13,000 multi-season packages in TWO minutes.... I sadly, was not one of the lucky purchasers... rats).

All that's left is naming the team.

Should it be the Jets to pay homage to their history? At first I agreed with a resounding OF COURSE!

But then.... I thought about it. It really wasn't the "return" of the same team, so why not start fresh?

And then I thought more about it (yes, I have WAY TOO MUCH FREE TIME). We used to be known for our famous "White Outs" at games; a tradition started here of wearing all white at special games. Wouldn't it be so cool (er, pardon the pun...) of calling the new team

THE MANITOBA BLIZZARD

Aw PERFECT!!! I am so smart!

It's a winter game. We relish the fact that we survive the extreme cold and punishing blizzards. And the best part; we could have a POLAR BEAR NAMED BLIZZARD as our mascot. Manitoba is known the world over for our Polar Bears. We even had the oldest polar bear in captivity - until Debby passed on at the ripe age of 42 in 2008.

I could just see it now; a fierce Polar Bear on the front of white and blue jerseys, with a sweep of blue like a blizzard wind behind the Manitoba name. His huge paw could even be swiping at a puck!

And think of the merchandise! Cute, cuddly little polar bears for the little fans.

Awesome furry hats for the adults.

White jerseys for the BLIZZARD WHITEOUTS!!!!

I need to contact True North, because obviously this delay means they ARE going with a new name and are just waiting for all the promotional stuff to be done to present to a waiting city....

The Manitoba Blizzard. Awesome.

Until I finally listened to that little voice in my head that whispered "it sounds familiar...."

So I Googled. And found that our Women's Junior Hockey team is named the Blizzard. So is a soccer team. A soccer team??? That's not a winter sport!

AW CRAP.

And here I thought I was soooo smart. I guess I'd better scrap my doodle of the new logo then...

Too bad -- it looked soooo cool!