2 weeks Ago By Paul Friesen
Mark Scheifele shared some interesting insight from the late, great Dale Hawerchuk on Friday. The Winnipeg Jets assistant captain recalled his old junior coach telling him losing isn’t always a bad thing. It can be necessary.
Their Barrie Colts were awful in his first season, and the mentor was providing his pupil with a lesson. “You first have to learn how to lose,” is how Scheifele remembered it. “Before you get to learn how to win.
” When it comes to the Stanley Cup playoffs, the Jets have the former down pat. Beginning on Saturday, we’ll see if they’ve absorbed the latter. Because all the regular-season platitudes in the world won’t mean a thing if they don’t find their swing.
Head coach Scott Arniel himself said not long ago the one Presidents’ Trophy he won, as an assistant with the New York Rangers in 2015, is collecting dust in his basement. What does his team have to do to count this one a success? Let’s dust off the various possibilities. A FIRST-ROUND EXIT This team has been there, done that, the last two years, after various levels of regular-season success.
A third springtime strikeout would undo all the good will it’s piled up since October. Crowds are bouncing back after they hit rock-bottom last season. The entertainment value of some high-end talent is no doubt one reason.
The other is hope. That four-letter word is behind every Jets flag flying in a front yard, flapping from a car window or hanging off the back of a Winnipeg firetruck this week. It’s behind every Go-Jets-Go sign in the parking lot of a business and every Jets-related item on a restaurant menu, including the Perfetti Cake Shake advertised at a joint along Portage Avenue.
This town is starved for a winner. Anything resembling what happened the last two years would leave it throwing up through another four-letter word. A SECOND-ROUND EXIT Getting past the St.
Louis Blues might exorcise a six-year-old playoff demon, but it wouldn’t be enough on its own to spark dancing in the streets. Sure, it would get the first-round monkey off their backs. But the next monster they’d face could well be Colorado, causing recurring nightmares that are fresher, just 12 months old.
Besides, what do you get for winning a playoff round – the equivalent of a participation ribbon and a “thanks for coming out.” It’s a step, perhaps, and would placate some fans. But at that rate of progress, by the time they win the Stanley Cup players like Scheifele and Connor Hellebuyck will barely be able to lift the thing over their heads.
A CONFERENCE FINAL APPEARANCE In previous playoff previews, this where we set the bar. Mainly because it’s where the Jets themselves set it back in 2018. If that seems like a lifetime ago, it’s because it is.
Just ask Patrik Laine. Or Jacob Trouba. Or Blake Wheeler.
That playoff run was supposed to be the start of something special. Instead it was an off-ramp to playoff irrelevance. If someone had suggested they’d win just one playoff series over the next six seasons, we’d have committed them to filling potholes every spring.
Come to think of it, maybe that’s the task some Jets players should have been assigned when they bowed out so early. You know, for a lesson in hard work. This current group has hard work down in spades, though.
Which is why building a road to Round 3 and then stopping would still feel like just that: an unfinished road. REACHING THE STANLEY CUP FINAL This is the first time we’ve set the bar this high, but I doubt there’s a player or member of the organization who wouldn’t agree. This season won’t feel like a success unless the Jets are squaring off with the Eastern Conference champ for all the marbles sometime in June.
The first-place finish, overall, and the way they did it – coming red-hot out of the gate, sparring with Washington throughout, fending off a late charge from division-rival Dallas – raises expectations. Defence wins championships, and this one has given up the fewest goals in the NHL for two straight years. It has the best goalie for a second straight year.
It can score. And when it’s healthy – if it gets there – it’s four lines deep. So fasten your seat belts and prepare for Jets Playoff Flight 2025.
Put your tray tables in the upright position, deposit your regular-season results into the air-sickness bag in the pouch in front of you and get re-acquainted with hockey that matters. “It’s been a great regular season,” forward Morgan Barron, sitting next to me in the dressing room, said on Friday. “But you and I sat here a few months ago and talked about it.
We know we’re going to be judged based on Game 83 and on. And we’ve talked about that as a group. “It’s a great opportunity.
We’ve given ourselves home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs...
but the work starts now.” paul.friesen@kleinmedia.
ca X: @friesensunmedia.
