Broken Wings

Given a second chance at the NHL after an absence of nearly two decades, hockey fans in Atlanta immediately embraced the expansion Thrashers, named after the state bird.

Ownership problems had plagued the Flames, Atlanta’s original NHL franchise, and had played a major role in the team’s eventual departure for Calgary in 1980. But there would be no such worries this time around. With the backing of local media mogul Ted Turner, the Thrashers were poised to establish themselves as a fixture in Atlanta for years to come and become one of the NHL’s premier Sun Belt franchises.

Or so it seemed.

Little could anyone have imagined that the ghosts of decades past would again rise from the crypt to haunt Atlanta hockey fans, who were about to become history’s victims for a second time.

Read all the details in a year-by-year history of one of pro hockey’s worst-run teams of all time in Broken Wings: The sordid history of the NHL’s Atlanta Thrashers (1999-2011).