Jets autopsy shows symptoms were present
Head coach Paul Maurice got the most out of a young Winnipeg Jets team, with 114 points through the regular season, second-best in the NHL, and a trip to the Western Conference Final.
With pretty much the same team, this season should have been just as good, if not better.
Ninety-nine points and six playoff games later, the Jets are a first-round flop that saw their season flatline in St. Louis on the weekend.
Maurice didn’t get the most out of his team, and he wasn’t pretending he did on Monday.
“We got the most out of them for stretches. And we played really, really well. But covering that last inch, covering that last little bit of play, we’ve still got some work to do,” said Maurice.
As the autopsy began on Monday, some of the causes of death began to emerge, and it turns out the symptoms were there all along.
“The piece to our game that never came together the way we wanted it to was the defensive side of our game,” Maurice said. “Last year it was the quiet strength of our team nobody talked about. Because lots of people were scoring goals and were feeling good about it.
“But our dirty little secret in Winnipeg was we were a much better defensive team than people knew when they played us.”
It’s no secret that’s the teachable part of this game, unlike goal-scoring, speed and size.
So that regression in the dirty aspects of the game falls on Maurice and the Jets’ leaders.
It’s up to the coach to convince players to sacrifice offence for the greater good, then teach them how to do it. And it’s up to the captain and his assistants to nurse that buy-in in the room. Or force-feed it, if they have to. Blake Wheeler acknowledged on Monday it never did take completely, after insisting most of the season that all was well.
“Our game, all year we were trying to find it a bit,” Wheeler said. “From the beginning, even while we were winning it was something we just kept working at. The prior season, there was a 60 minute buy-in every night. I’m not saying we didn’t have that this year. But it just felt like even when we were winning, even when we were rolling, it just didn’t feel in sync.”
In the second half of the season it caught up with them, and the Jets wobbled into the playoffs, losing their grip on first place and barely hanging onto homeice advantage. Not surprising to many, they couldn’t handle the surging Blues, bowing out in six.
You’d expect the captain to back his head coach, and that’s exactly what Wheeler did.
“Any time you don’t win, you get fingers pointed,” he said. “Point the first one at me. It’s my job to get this team to that next level. The coach isn’t on the ice. The players are on the ice. We’re the ones that are accountable. His record speaks for itself.
“Obviously I’d go through a brick wall for the guy. I don’t want to play for anyone else.”
The one opinion that matters more than the captain’s is that of the general manager.
“The coaching staff did what they could to get every ounce out of this team,” GM Kevin Cheveldayoff said. “There’s never been a waning confidence in the coaching staff on my part.”
One step back, including an early playoff ouster, is not enough for a drastic move.
If it’s the first step of a few, Maurice will be on borrowed time soon enough. Start next season with an obvious lack of buy-in and the heat goes up. Or it could be one step back to take two forward. The Jets should have learned a hard lesson in this. There is no playoff switch to flip, come April.
If the right habits aren’t entrenched by then, if some players think the regular season is all about rolling up the goals and assists, they set themselves up for the big belly flop.
Perhaps the Jets forgot how hard they actually worked last season to accomplish what they did. Next year, the man with the whistle around his neck might have to carry a whip, too. Underachieving again is not an option.