GROUNDED ... JETS
Similar teams meet today in Winnipeg
Stop us if this sounds familiar.
Last season, unburdened by the weight of expectations, the team put together one of those feelgood stories which delighted its fans while engaging a larger audience. They made the playoffs. The young players meshed seamlessly with the veterans. True, the post-season was a crashing disappointment, but the lasting impression was this was just the start and the team would continue on a smooth, uninterrupted arc toward greater glory.
Then the new season began and, with some exciting new faces in the lineup, there was a heightened sense of anticipation. But after a promising start, things changed abruptly. Some of the veterans weren’t quite as productive and the younger players weren’t quite ready for a feature role. The team started to struggle. Then injuries started to pile up. Then there was drama at the trade deadline. The centre could not hold and, with three weeks left in the season, the bottom has fallen out of the 2015-16 campaign.
Now, the only excitement concerns the draft lottery.
Vancouver Canucks, meet the Winnipeg Jets. Winnipeg Jets, meet the Vancouver Canucks. And, no, that’s not a mirror you’re looking into.
“It’s not a secret,” Jets head coach Paul Maurice said Monday when asked about his team’s travails. “The game’s been around a long time and the storylines are very similar. Young teams usually go through that stretch before they get better.
“But it’s one of those books you don’t see once. You get to read it every year.”
This they know all too well on the frozen tundra and in the rainforest.
Tuesday night, the Canucks and Jets meet in a contest which is of massive importance to the bizarro race for Auston Matthews, but of little significance to the rest of the hockey world. The Jets sit 29th in the 30-team NHL. The Canucks are tied for 27th, just two points ahead. Last season, the Canucks finished with 101 points and were second in the Pacific Division, while the Jets finished with 99 points beating out the L.A. Kings (!) for the final playoff spot in the West.
So, what has happened with these two teams?
The parallels, in fact, are staggering, right down to the confusing messaging they’ve delivered to their fans and the run of buzzard’s luck throughout the season. The Jets, like the Canucks, planned to integrate some new faces into the lineup at the start of the season, but that plan has had to be redrawn a couple of times.
At first, it was supposed to be Nik Ehlers, the dazzling Danish rookie, and Andrew Copp breaking in, but that quickly turned into Ehlers, Copp, Joel Armia and goalie Connor Hellebuyck. The injuries started to pile up — most significantly to No. 1 centre Bryan Little — making the lineup even younger.
Team captain Andrew Ladd was traded at the deadline. The injuries continued and the Jets will be without five regulars — Ehlers, Armia, Little, Mark Stuart and Mathieu Perreault — when they meet the Canucks. A sixth, Marko Dano, is questionable.
Throw in substandard goaltending by veteran Ondrej Pavelec, brutal special teams and the in-and-out contributions of key youngsters Jacob Trouba and Alex Burmistrov, and that black smoke you see rising from Portage Street is the tire fire around the MTS Centre.
“We came back after a good year and we had that little taste,” Stuart said. “We were confident going into this season. Of course, this is disappointing.”
“Sitting in the situation we’re in now, no, you don’t think that’s going to happen,” Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff said.
Still, as damning as their record is, the news isn’t all bad in the ’Peg. At the start of the season, Hockey’s Future ranked the Jets’ collection of prospects second in the NHL, and adding a top-three pick into that mix won’t hurt their standing. Ehlers is a star in the making. Centre Kyle Connor (Michigan State) and defenceman Josh Morrissey (AHL) are highend prospects. Add that to the young core of Mark Scheifele, Tyler Myers (26), Burmistrov, Trouba, Dano and Hellebuyck, and some seeds have been planted in Winnipeg.
“We came back … and we had that little taste. We were confident going into this season.”
— Mark Stuart
We’ll find out soon enough if those seeds can grow in the harsh Manitoba winters.
“We want to be those guys,” Schiefele said. “We want to take that challenge.”
“The goal isn’t to lose in the first round,” Cheveldayoff said. “The goal is to win the Stanley Cup. We want to be more than what we are. The reality is, the only way to get there is to continue to add pieces and we’re committed to adding those pieces through the draft.”
Where have you heard that before?