Lost Teams story

Atlanta Thrashers: Not One Playoff Win

The Atlanta Thrashers.

Play-off matches won, in twelve seasons.

The second attempt

Atlanta had the Flames from 1972 to 1980, and lost them to Calgary. The Thrashers arrived as an expansion team in 1999 and were named after the state bird.

The second attempt went worse than the first.

The record

They finished last in their division in most of their seasons. In 2007 they won the division and reached the play-offs, where the New York Rangers beat them four nil.

That is the entire postseason history: four matches, four defeats.

Kovalchuk

The one thing they had was Ilya Kovalchuk, taken first in the 2001 draft, who scored more goals than almost anyone in the league for most of a decade.

In 2010, unable to agree a contract, they traded him to New Jersey. Attendances, which had never been good, fell further.

The sale

The ownership group had been in litigation with itself for years. In May 2011 the club was sold to a Canadian group and moved to Winnipeg within weeks.

What it left

Atlanta is a large city with money and a growing population, and it has now failed twice at the same thing.

The team that replaced the Thrashers in Winnipeg took the name of the team Winnipeg had lost fifteen years earlier, which means one city's second loss became another city's second chance.