At least he has nice things to say about the fans here. The rest of it? Well... I guess he's honest.
This was originally posted at SB Nation Atlanta on Saturday, May 14th, 2011. Feel free to follow the saga with breaking news reports on the main StoryStream Thread.
Chris Mason was a guest this afternoon on the Illegal Curve radio show, which is – admittedly – broadcast from Winnipeg. The show’s always been very unbiased regarding relocation of teams to Winnipeg, though, and is a great place to turn to for interviews of players and occasionally press regarding that topic.
Red Deer, Alberta native Chris Mason was their guest on today’s show. His interview was honest, candid, and probably not what Thrashers fans wanted to hear. I bring up the fact that he’s from Red Deer because Mason, unlike a lot of his more vocal teammates on Twitter (see Anthony Stewart's tweet), wouldn’t have a problem playing in the tundra. He says as much.
I give Mason credit for saying that the fans here are a good fanbase, if small. I do question him making a comment regarding whether or not Atlanta Spirit have been shopping the team to parties interested in keeping the team here. The players don’t know that part of the situation – heck, they probably know as much as the fans do – and I don’t think that it’s appropriate for one of them to state that the team’s owners have probably exhausted all options regarding keeping the Thrashers in Atlanta.
Also, his "selling" the team to the Winnipeg market was a bit much. He could have just said that "we have a great team, and if we get sold to TNSE then Winnipeg will find out what kind of squad we have," or something like that.
Here’s the audio. Notice how he sounds like he’s speaking of the team in the past-tense. Whether he means that because he’s talking about last season or for another reason, well, that remains to be seen.
Also, note to Mason – the team wasn’t good in January and February. They were terrible. He helped with that.
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