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Like a lover who bailed without notice, Cawthon was stripped of the team he had fallen for and the players that he had come to adore.

That fall, as the Jets took the ice in Winnipeg for the beginning of the 2.0 era, Cawthon was beginning college at Auburn University, which straddles the state line of Alabama and Georgia.

His disdain for the situation he found himself in as a relatively new hockey fan lasted roughly three weeks into the season.

He wanted to give the Jets a chance.

“The main reason I did it was because those players were why I fell in love with hockey,” Cawthon said. “The thing is, most of them are gone now but I stuck with it this long and I fell in love with the players that replaced them.”

To watch the games, Cawthon signed up for the NHL’s streaming service. Through his Xbox, and a wireless connector he had to purchase to receive a wifi signal, Cawthon could now tune into the games being played 1,500 miles or so to the north.

It wasn’t always easy, however.

For several, he’d watch the games from his apartment near Auburn. The broadcasts were often a pixelated blur, a product of a shoddy internet connection that, at the best of times, made it a challenge to do his schoolwork, let alone tune into game.

“I have plenty of fond memories watching the pixelated players,” he said, laughing.

The fondest of those, he said, came on a wild April night in 2015.

Now a senior at Auburn, and still working with the same crappy internet connection, the Jets were in Colorado in the penultimate game of the 2014-15 season with a chance to clinch their first playoff spot since returning to Winnipeg.