Roller-coaster Jets season on upswing
Winnipeg riding a two-game win streak into two games with Canucks
The mood was light, the smiles and jokes back. There were even Christmas handshakes from the coach before the team climbed aboard a flight to the West Coast.
If you were buying toys for the Winnipeg Jets, you wouldn’t put a yo-yo on the list — because they already are one.
For the sixth time this season, the Jets are coming off back-to-back wins as they load up for a two-game run at the Vancouver Canucks.
Sure, that’s a modest accomplishment, especially when you consider the last two have come against Florida and Colorado, two train wrecks on skates.
The cynic would say that just means they’re due for another Slinky-slide down the basement stairs: Five times this season, the Jets have put together skids of at least two games.
“That’s the way this league is,” Mark Scheifele said. “When you’re winning things are great, when you’re losing things aren’t good. It definitely puts that desire in your heart to win. Because you don’t want to come to the rink the next day and feel like junk.” Nobody wants junk at Christmas. The way Mathieu Perreault sees it, the Jets won’t be coming home with any this week.
Perreault acknowledged it’s been a roller-coaster season through 34 games. But he sees the most recent upswing as more than just another temporary turn for the better.
The schedule from hell behind them, Perreault sees the Jets moving forward with a new mindset.
“It’s changed a lot,” he said. “That three-day break we had, when we came back against Florida we didn’t feel our best because coming off three days off. But now we’re really feeling that rest in our bodies and it showed (Sunday).”