C’mon in off the freezing window ledge, Jets fans; they stunk, but they don’t stink

Opinion

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This article was published 14/12/2017 (2324 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

No, the sky is not falling.

That white stuff fluttering to the ground Friday morning was just snow, not the heavens descending upon us after a long and ugly Thursday night at Bell MTS Place.

Keep calm and carry on, people. There was nothing falling Friday morning that cannot be scraped up with a shovel.

Look, I’m not going to try to sugar-coat this: there was very little to like in a 5-1 Winnipeg Jets loss to the Chicago Blackhawks. The Jets stunk from the opening faceoff and they were positively fetid by the final horn.

A high-flying Jets team that was the toast of the league at the start of the month has hit some turbulence the past two weeks, taking the loss in four of their last five games.

And the loss to the Blackhawks wasn’t the only ugly one. A team that had been so good at keeping the puck out of its own net has suddenly found itself on the wrong side of some very crooked scores.

Five goals to the ‘Hawks. Four to the Lightning. Six to the Panthers. Five to the Red Wings.

With the exception of a merciful visit from the struggling Vancouver Canucks in the middle of it all — and a lopsided 5-1 Jets win — the recent news out of Jetsland has been troubling.

But four losses is not Four Horsemen and no, this is not a Jets-ocalypse, although it was sure playing like that among the faithful on Twitter and reader comment boards Friday morning.

We’re like a cowed dog here in Winnipeg. We’ve been kicked around and abused so long that we’re already ducking for cover before anyone even raises a hand. So, when someone actually does pick up a rolled newspaper, we’re turning tail and heading for the door.

Judging by the angst in Jets Nation right now, it seems like there’s a sizable number of fans who’ve had a sneaking suspicion all along that the team’s success was too good to be true.

And so now that things have gotten bumpy, it’s like our worst fears have been realized. This is why we can’t have any nice things.

You know you’re in trouble when I’m the voice of optimism and, yet, here we are.

Folks, there is a lot more right than wrong with the Jets right now.

Subtract two of a team’s top four defencemen from any club in the league and they’re going to have trouble keeping pucks out of their net and putting wins up on the board.

I know there are a lot of Toby Enstrom haters out there and Dustin Byfuglien’s erratic play drives me as crazy as he does you, but those are two very big pieces of the lineup that are out with injuries.

And most of the rest of this team’s problems the last little while can be attributed, I think, to nothing more than youth.

You ever raise teenagers? They’re a bit erratic, right? Self-destructive, too. And all over the map, bringing home A’s one minute and wrapping the family car around a streetlight the next.

They are the source of our greatest peaks and deepest, darkest valleys. Ladies and gentlemen: your 2017-18 Winnipeg Jets.

Indeed, I’d argue the most surprising thing isn’t that this team of snot-nosed youngsters has hit a skid, but that it didn’t happen a long time ago.

The kids had been very well-behaved for a very long time; they were overdue to break something and, well… they finally have.

The question now is whether they can pick up the pieces before they do permanent damage to their playoff chances. And at the risk of being exactly the kind of alarmist I’ve been railing about, it’s not hard to see how this thing could go seriously off the rails with a schedule leading into Christmas that will see the Jets play a home-and-home with a very good St. Louis team, followed by singles against a Nashville squad that’s been beaten in regulation just once in their last 10; the resurgent Boston Bruins; and the New York Islanders, who’ve gone 9-2-2 in Brooklyn so far.

You want a road map to disaster? It would look a bit like that: a slumping team, injury-depleted lineup, four of their next five on the road and some very tough opponents.

But if past performance is a reliable predictor of future performance, you have to like the Jets chances of catching themselves before they fall too far. That three-game losing skid this month was the longest of the season for a team that has shown itself to be remarkably adept — particularly given its youth — at responding to adversity.

Whether it’s been the occasional stinker of a game or just a bad period, if there’s a defining characteristic of this crew it’s been their ability to dig deep when the going got tough.

Indeed, I’d argue the Jets have been at their very best this year at precisely those moments when you couldn’t help but wonder if the whole operation was in danger of crashing down again.

It’s how they started this remarkable season, losing their first two games and then — just when it seemed like, “here we go again” — going on a tear that saw them win four of their next five and set the tone for everything that was to come.

There’s a moment in the film Apollo 13 right after the explosion on the ship in which everyone at mission control is panicking and head guy Ed Harris tells everyone to work the problem, beginning with: “What do we have on the spacecraft that is good?”

Quite a bit, actually. The Jets are third in their division, fifth in their conference and for all their problems lately, they’re still playing .500 hockey over their last 10 at 4-4-2.

They’ve got the third-best home record in the conference at 11-3-1, the 10th-best road record in the league at 7-6-4 and their power-play is third-best in the league overall and tops at home.

They’ve got two of the top-15 scoring leaders (Blake Wheeler and Mark Scheifele); the third-best in assists (Wheeler); the second-best in the league in power-play goals (Patrik Laine); and the second-best in shooting percentage (Mathieu Perreault).

Now, I suppose the wheels on all of that could suddenly come off. I suppose it could even happen over the next 10 days.

Or, maybe… just maybe, this team is made of something a little more than that.

We’ll find out soon enough.

In the meantime, where’s my shovel?

 

email: paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek