Winnipeg Jets Trivia
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48 free Winnipeg Jets trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Winnipeg has had two Jets: the WHA-born original that signed Bobby Hull for a million dollars, won three Avco Cups and left for Phoenix in 1996, and the Atlanta Thrashers, bought by True North in 2011 and renamed within a month of a 17-minute season-ticket sellout. This Jets trivia quiz covers both: Ben Hatskin, the Hot Line, the 1978 win over the Soviets, the brutal 1979 expansion draft, Dale Hawerchuk, Teemu Selanne's 76-goal rookie year, the Spirit of Manitoba, the birth of the Whiteout, and Norm Maciver's last goal. It then follows the new Jets: the Coyotes bid that fell ten minutes short, the 'Drive to 13,000', BTO at the home opener, the RCAF roundel, Mick E. Moose, Patrik Laine, the 2018 run to the conference finals, Connor Hellebuyck's Vezinas and the 2025 Presidents' Trophy. Easy questions sit alongside hard ones for fans who remember Winnipeg Arena. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedic and reference sources before publishing, and each question carries a citation. For more, try our NHL trivia and hockey trivia pages.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The team that moved to Winnipeg in 2011 and became the Jets had played under what name?
Atlanta Thrashers
Atlanta Thrashers reached the playoffs once in Georgia and lost all four games; in 2026 the NHL folded their records and the original Jets' into a single franchise history.
Q 02Which league granted Winnipeg a founding franchise in December 1971?
World Hockey Association
World Hockey Association teams lured dozens of NHL players with bigger salaries; when the rebel league folded in 1979, the Jets were one of four clubs the NHL absorbed.
Q 03Whose giant portrait hung from the rafters above the original Jets at Winnipeg Arena?
Queen Elizabeth II
Queen Elizabeth II looked down from a painting so large it made a target: Jets players were known to fire pucks at it in practice, and it came down ahead of the 1999 Pan Am Games.
Q 04Which NHL star jumped to the Jets in June 1972 with a record $1 million signing bonus?
Bobby Hull
Bobby Hull's bonus was partly paid by the WHA's other teams, because landing the NHL's leading active goal-scorer gave the whole league instant credibility; 67 NHL players jumped in its first year.
Q 05Which two Swedes joined the Golden Jet on the Winnipeg Jets' famous 'Hot Line'?
Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson
Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson arrived from Sweden in 1974 and dazzled for four seasons, until the New York Rangers signed both of them away together in 1978.
Q 06Whom did the Jets beat 5-3 in a celebrated January 1978 exhibition?
The Soviet Union national team
The Soviet Union national team, the power of international hockey, lost to a club built around Swedish and Finnish imports; the Jets went on to win the WHA title again that spring.
Q 07Whom did the reborn Jets take with their first draft pick, seventh overall in 2011?
Mark Scheifele
Mark Scheifele played only eleven NHL games across his first two seasons, twice being sent back to junior hockey in Barrie, before becoming the Jets' top centre for more than a decade.
Q 08Whom did the Jets draft first overall in 1981?
Dale Hawerchuk
Dale Hawerchuk scored 103 points as an 18-year-old rookie and lifted the Jets from 32 points to 80, at the time the biggest one-season turnaround in NHL history.
Q 09Which team eliminated the Jets in all six of their playoff meetings between 1983 and 1990?
Edmonton Oilers
Edmonton Oilers lost just four games to Winnipeg across those six series, three of them in 1990, and went on to lift the Stanley Cup in five of the six springs.
Q 10Which Jets fan tradition was born in the 1987 playoffs as an answer to Calgary's 'C of Red'?
The Winnipeg Whiteout
The Winnipeg Whiteout began with a request that fans wear white to home playoff games; the Jets beat the Flames in six, and the crowd has dressed that way every postseason since.
Q 11Which rookie scored 76 goals for the Jets in 1992-93, a first-year record that still stands?
Teemu Selanne
Teemu Selanne beat Mike Bossy's rookie record of 53 by 23 goals; the Jets had waited four years for him, having drafted him 10th overall in 1988 while he stayed in Finland.
Q 12Which group of local businessmen tried and failed to buy the Jets and keep them in Winnipeg in 1995?
Spirit of Manitoba
Spirit of Manitoba looked set to buy the team once the public had raised about $13 million, but the group fell short of cash; all the effort bought Winnipeg was one farewell season.
Q 13Where did buyers Steven Gluckstern and Richard Burke first plan to move the Jets before settling on Phoenix?
Q 21Besides Manitoba Moose, which other name did True North weigh for the returning NHL team before choosing Jets?
Falcons
Falcons was weighed alongside Manitoba Moose, the name said to be favoured inside True North, but public support for the old Jets name proved too strong to ignore.
Q 22Where was the 'Winnipeg Jets' name finally revealed in June 2011?
At the NHL entry draft in Saint Paul
At the NHL entry draft in Saint Paul, the secret came out mid-sentence: the team's chairman called his general manager up to 'make our first pick, on behalf of the Winnipeg Jets'.
Q 23Which goaltender started for the Jets in their 2011 home opener, the NHL's return to Winnipeg?
Ondrej Pavelec
Minneapolis-Saint Paul
Minneapolis-Saint Paul had lost its own NHL team to Dallas two years earlier, but the buyers could not agree terms for an arena there, so they struck a deal in Arizona instead.
Q 14From which state did the IHL club that became the Manitoba Moose relocate in 1996?
Minnesota
Minnesota: the Moose had played only two seasons there before local buyers moved them north, giving Winnipeg a new pro team within months of the Jets' departure.
Q 15Which 1995 first-round pick was the last original Jet still active in the NHL when he retired in 2017?
Shane Doan
Shane Doan played his rookie season in Winnipeg, moved with the team to Phoenix and stayed for two more decades, the last 13 seasons as the Coyotes' captain.
Q 16Whose number 25 did the original Jets retire after his whole NHL career in Winnipeg?
Thomas Steen
Thomas Steen played all 14 of his NHL seasons for the Jets; his son Alexander, born in Winnipeg during that run, went on to win the Stanley Cup with St. Louis in 2019.
Q 17Which team did True North come within minutes of buying in 2010, a year before the NHL returned to Winnipeg?
Phoenix Coyotes
Phoenix Coyotes, the original Jets under another name: the league had even drafted a schedule with Winnipeg in it before an Arizona city council stepped in with a subsidy.
Q 18Which True North chairman brought the Moose, then the NHL, to Winnipeg?
Mark Chipman
Mark Chipman, from a family of Winnipeg car dealers, kept pro hockey in the city with a minor-league team, built a downtown arena for it, then spent years courting the NHL.
Q 19About how long did Jets season tickets take to sell out when public sales opened in June 2011?
17 minutes
17 minutes was all the public sale needed; the waiting list that opened afterwards had to be capped at 8,000 names within two hours.
Q 20When the NHL returned in 2011, True North moved its AHL team to which city for four seasons?
St. John's
St. John's hosted the club as the IceCaps until 2015, when True North brought it home again to share the Jets' arena under its old Manitoba Moose name.
Ondrej Pavelec made the start a year and a day after he fainted in the opening minutes of his team's 2010 home opener, hit his head on the ice and left on a stretcher.
Q 24Who scored the first goal for the relocated Jets, in October 2011?
Nik Antropov
Nik Antropov scored early in the third period of the home opener, the only goal the sellout crowd got to cheer in a 5-1 loss to Montreal.
Q 25Which Manitoba Moose coach became the new Jets' first head coach?
Claude Noel
Claude Noel had coached the Moose for just one season when the NHL arrived; he got the job after the incumbent coach was let go, and held it until Paul Maurice replaced him in January 2014.
Q 26Which team swept the Jets in 2015 in Winnipeg's first NHL playoff series since 1996?
Anaheim Ducks
Anaheim Ducks won the first three games after trailing at the second intermission each time, then finished the sweep in Winnipeg's first home playoff games in 19 years.
Q 27Whom did the Jets select second overall in 2016 after winning the lottery with the sixth-worst record?
Patrik Laine
Patrik Laine scored 36 goals as a rookie; less than five years later the Jets traded him to Columbus for Pierre-Luc Dubois, the player chosen right after him in that draft.
Q 28Whom did the Jets beat in April 2018 for Winnipeg's first playoff series win in 31 years?
Minnesota Wild
Minnesota Wild were shut out 5-0 in the clinching Game 5; the club that came from Atlanta had never won a single playoff game before that series began.
Q 29Which Presidents' Trophy winner did the Jets beat in seven games to reach the 2018 conference finals?
Nashville Predators
Nashville Predators lost the deciding game 5-1 on their own ice; home advantage counted for little in that series, with the visiting team winning five of the seven games.
Q 30Which team swept the Jets in the 2021 second round after Winnipeg swept Edmonton?
Montreal Canadiens
Montreal Canadiens rode the sweep all the way to the Stanley Cup Final; the series turned in Game 1, when the Jets' top centre drew a four-game suspension for a late charge.