Jets anxious for second leg of playoffs

WINNIPEG — Last Tuesday was a write-off. Wednesday, a proper chance to recover.

Thursday and Friday were a return to a normal routine: meetings, video and practice.

Once the weekend has rolled around, the Winnipeg Jets were antsier than a cocker spaniel watching a squirrel through the front window.

Will somebody please let me out?

“I would have liked to play tomorrow,” Mathieu Perreault said on Saturday. “Or today.”

Yes, the Jets will be wellrested and healthier than quarter horses by the time they’re released from between-round captivity to start the second leg of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

But they’ll also be far removed from the emotional high they were on in the days following Monday’s tripleovertime, series-clinching win over Edmonton.

“You get amped up to play games,” Perreault said. “And if you’re not playing for that long, sometimes you can lose that a little bit. We’ll have to figure it out on our own here … and get back to that emotional level for Game 1.”

When hockey players get on a roll, they just want to keep going. Practice? Who needs it. A day off? OK, but just one.

Winnipeg’s four straight playoff wins matches its season high, back in late February. Include the two victories to close out the regular season and the Jets are on a six-game heater, something they haven’t experienced since late in the 2017-18 season.

“You try and stay sharp in practice,” Adam Lowry said. “You want to make sure you don’t let any bad habits creep into your game throughout the practice. And then you’re kind of just waiting. Sometimes you get a little anxious to get started. We all want to just keep playing.”

Instead, they’ve been watching. Leafs vs Habs. Once upon a time it was the great Canadian rivalry.

Now, the winner is goin’ to Winnipeg, for a series starting Wednesday.

It’ll take a seventh game tonight to determine it, as the Habs stayed alive with a 3-2 overtime win in Game 6, Saturday night.

Waiting is a Jets team that runs the gamut of experience, from rookie Logan Stanley on the blue line to players in their prime, like Nik Ehlers, Mark Scheifele, Kyle Connor, Josh Morrissey and Connor Hellebuyck, to veterans in their midthirties, like Blake Wheeler, Paul Stastny, Nate Thompson and Trevor Lewis.

Perreault, at 33, isn’t far behind those old horses.

“This is what we play for,” he said. “A guy like me that’s getting older, you never know when another chance is going to come up. Now it’s going to be down to eight teams and you can really cherish that and bring everything you have to that second round so you can keep moving forward.”

The man tasked with having his team ready for Game 1 of Round 2 says it’s a matter of covering all the bases, starting with recovery and preparation.

“You can’t practise at a playoff pace,” head coach Paul Maurice said. “It’s not the same. We don’t want to. We’re not running and finishing every check and battling in the same way.”