Sweet tap dancing Gods of Hockey. Is that the newly signed Captain of the Winnipeg Jets riding a private plane into town wearing a cape and looking like every bit of the man who is going to lead the team back onto the ice after a 15 year hiatus?

Why that is exactly what that is. What a wonderful day.

There are precious few times in life where wrongs can be righted years after the fact. Accidentally punch your brother in the face when you were 8 and broke his glasses? Odds are he is going to carry that grudge to his grave, or at the very least bring it up in front of girlfriends for the next 20 years*

Perhaps you were cut from an athletic team as a youth because you were impossibly small as a 7th grader. Odds are you aren’t about to go back to your junior high school and demand the second opportunity to try out for the Junior Men’s Basketball team all these years and all these inches later.

Even if you made the team, having girls from your school watch you practice is nowhere near as cool as it would have been back in the day. No, that ship has sailed too*

But lo and behold one of the biggest injustices in Canadian sport has been reversed some 15 years later, and the Winnipeg Jets are back on the ice for the 2011-12 NHL season. And don’t even try to bother us with all of your logical rhetoric that the Jets are currently languishing in Phoenix and that the Thrashers are in fact the team returning – not the Jets.

Are these the real Winnipeg Jets? Let’s take ask a few pertient questions shall we?

Question 1: Do they play in Winnipeg? (Yes/No)

Question 2: Are they called the Jets? (Yes/No)

Question 3: Does the jerseys they wear say Jets on the front? (Yes/No)

Exactly.

The Jets have come home and they are a damn fine team in a few years too if you ask us**

Soon enough the rapturous joy of having the Jets back on the ice will wear off, buried under an under performing powerplay, injury problems or some such thing. Same goes for the out pouring of goodwill from hockey fans around the league.

So long as Winnipeg is playing in the Eastern Conference you have the unparalleled support of the Western Conference fans. We hope you go all the way to the Stanley Cup finals in 2012 – before losing to Edmonton in a sweep where you are outscored by a combined tally of 92-3***

But next year, when you are in the Western Conference and fighting with our beloved Oilers for precious playoff points there will be no love. But in the meantime we have no beef with you Winnipeg.

In fact we are pretty pumped for you cats. As someone who lives in Edmonton and has lived through a year long hockey strike we can only imagine what NHL free Canadian winters must be like year after year after year.

But all that frozen boredom ends in October.

The interepid battalion of Nation Network writers will be setting up shop here in the next few weeks, introducing you to your new team in the detail that can only come from being REALLY REALLY intense about your ice hockey squadron.

In the meantime however, consider this to be a guest book where everyone can stop by and wish the Winnipeg Jets and their legions of fans all the best. All the temporary best mind you, cause next year we hope you go 0-82 and are robbed of your good players in a series of lopsided trades by the Edmonton Oilers who are looking to repeat as Stanley Cup Champions in the 2012-13 season.

Remember this sad, sad day? Well the next time the Jets play the Wings? It’s gonna be some sweet sweet comeuppance.