TSN: Winnipeg Jets chairman Mark Chipman when asked about being in win-now mode.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Darren Dreger: “But you’re in win-now mode and that’s the message to the fans. And I mean that was made abundantly clear with the deep investment to Connor Hellebuyck and Mark Scheifele. Two very good NHL players in any market, but he could have gone the other way in the offseason and considered a renovation to the team or a rebuild.
Chipman: “Yeah, for sure. You could you could, you could reduce the costs, that’s the quickest way to do this is to cut player costs.
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Again, you know, like, I do this for a living so I examine those those kinds of options really thoughtfully, or try to.
The word rebuild is really easy to throw around. Because it sounds good. Yeah. And I, you know, I’ve gone, I’ve gone through every, every team that’s said rebuild.”
Dregre: “It’s expensive.”
Chipman: “It’s expensive, and it’s, it takes a long time. And people think, we’ll rebuild in a year or two,
Dreger: “No.”
Chipman: “Rebuilds at a minimum, they’re five, they can be seven. I can show you some that are 10, 12 years in the making. Our market doesn’t deserve that right now. You can’t take a team that’s made the playoffs five of its last six years, and take it part and expect your fan base to support that. If you have the means of, of keeping it together, you got to keep it together.
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And as I said, we got some really exciting young talent coming up, you know, will be, can be added to our core over the next few years. So this is, you know, I mean Darren, I, anybody worth their salt in this game is trying to win. Like that’s what this, you know, we’re trying to, we’re trying to win and, and I and if our fans ever get the sense that we’re not trying to win, then we’re in real trouble.”