The Jets dropped their third in a row yesterday, albeit one game was an OT loss, but nonetheless the wheels are starting to look a bit shaky right now in the stretch drive. Pick your reason for yesterday’s loss, there’s more than a few to hang your hat on but don’t ignore some trends, one that might be affecting the team down another stretch drive.
It seems when the going gets tough the Jets can’t get going. Too windy on the runway? Don’t want to fly in bad weather? Pick whatever aviation metaphor you want to use but things are looking more the same than different right now for the Winnipeg Jets. Last season the Jets had a chance to make that post season but as March ended the team went on a five game losing skid to all but make the task impossible without luck and help- neither of which arrived.
The same thing is happening again it appears and the chance to right the ship is only going to get harder. Go back to the inaugural season in Winnipeg first and see the record for the end of March, 1-5-1. They had a chance as that month they went 6-7-1 overall at one point 4-2 before the turbulence hit.
The obvious question is ‘what’s wrong?’ That’s a tough one to answer but if the play against the Islander and Sens is any indication the Jets aren’t competing. No metric for this one it’s an ‘eyes only’ measurement and one that has an interesting point in the 60 minutes of game time. The Jets won the third period, and handily, as they outplayed, outworked and outscored the Senators for 20 minutes. Alas that compete-level was way above what it had been the previous two periods.
So I lied about there being no metric and this being an eyes-only stat. Below are two charts from Extra Skater to show the difference. The first one shows the shot attempts at all situations
The one below shows at even strength
What you see is that while the baseline stats say the Jets outshot the Sens for the game the chances and play was all in the Senators favour until the 3rd period. We know from our eyes what happened on the third. The Jets, Byfuglien in particular, came out lack a pack of hungry dogs and took over the game. They drew penalties, they had scoring chances, they had a goal, and they gave themselves a chance to get back in the game. They just ran out of time against Craig Anderson.
But the overall theme seems to be the same after three years. As the games get more important and teams push down the stretch to fight tooth and nail for a spot the Jets just can’t get off the ground. If they do it’s way too late as was evidenced yesterday afternoon.
This is the third year in Winnipeg and it appears this is happening again. What exactly is ‘this’? It’s the malaise, the lack of care, the melancholy nature of the team coming to the forefront at the worst possible time. It’s why a new coach is not the only thing needed to change this team.
The coaching move was one part of the experiment and now that we look in the remaining Petri dishes and test for results a safe assumption is there is still a problem. The culture is just not good and that has to change. Maurice may have instilled different tactics, work ethic, and other variables but deep down this is the same Jets culture.
Though the most optimistic fans felt that Maurice had been a successful change in the experiment reality may beginning to say otherwise. It’s why fans, media, writers and most importantly, Jets management, have to look hard at what’s wrong with the culture in this experiment.