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Jets host the sharks after their 5-0 blanmking of the Predators.
On a Sunday void any real significant, or insignificant news depending on how you view anything said by Evander Kane, the real story comes noting what team will show up tonight. The Jets are once again a Jekyll or Hyde team and there's no telling what fans and coaches see night in and night out.
One interesting topic might be the element of 'luck' and how it has affected the Jets record to date. I had seen a graph recently but never recorded the link but I beleive it was created by the very smart and intelligent Rob Vollman. What it showed was a method of quantifying how much 'luck' all thirty teams had experienced, or not.
Luck is a hard thing to discuss without sounding kooky. Most of us know it was 'puck luck' and think of it that way. A puck going in off a skate versus careening wide. A post instead of the back of the net or a bounce off the glass instead of straight over. All of these events have some degree of luck involved with the outcomes.
In the graph it showed the Jets as having less than an average level of luck so far this season. Judging by some of the outcomes in the last few weeks it's hard not to feel that the Jets are a bit 'unlucky' in some capacity. Where that luck is seems to be an ever-changing answer, however the results thus far seem to point to one question:
Are the Jets better than their record?
I had not thought about this issue for a bit until I read some interesting thoughts on the Oilers today and one comment was "I feel the Oilers are better than their record". For another middling and disappointing team like the Jets it seems like a smart and comparable question.
There are probably ways to quantify this question and come up with a smart and well-supported answer. I'll leave that to guys smarter than me (read Arctic Ice Hockey) that being said how do you explain a team that beats Detroit, blows up against Chicago, comes home and shuts out Nashville before hosting San Jose tonight?
This is where it becomes very hard to make sense of the Jets because in the immediacy of games and results how does one judge this team let alone manage it?
Right now hockey fans are witnessing another reactionary meltdown in Edmonton where the pressure for results is forcing management to make moves that may or may not be good. With the trading of Smid the Oilers have gambled that the space they create to add a cheap centre in Horak and the ability to sign Bryzgalov will make the team better. Smid has a new deal, one he took a bit of a discount on, and one that would appear to have set him to be part of a developing Oilers team.
Maybe the goaltending tandem in Edmonton is better but is what skates immediately in front of him improved?
The situation amongst fans in Winnipeg is similar to that of Edmonton. They believe that the team should be better or that management should have foreseen that the team as it stands now is what they were building. So as Official Jet Fuel said "I'm sure management does (feel they are better than their record) this summer they said they believed in this core".
This is management's team and why commit to a group that is mediocre or less?
So if you believe this team is better than the record suggests do you want an Edmonton style approach to making changes?
Or
Do you prefer a patient approach as Captain Canuk said "it's a race a race not a sprint boys. Success for TNSE is measured by growth over seasons. We aren't done yet."?
The Jets are not as bad as Edmonton and have not necessarily shown anything that says ineptitude the same way and perhaps that's what fans should remember. The down side of making moves to address every little issue that arises is you spin gears but never move forward always caught in a cycle of development.
It's too early to say that the Jets are more or less than the sum of their parts as they are both at times. But I don't think there is a Jets fan around who wants to experience what those in Edmonton experience year after year. So once again we come back to the same narrative again and again, how to cure the malaise in the team that is inconsistency? Perhaps an even streak of luck points to what this team is or isn't, but does anyone really believe luck determines the outcome of 82 games? Me either so how does this team overcome inconsistency?
Well the answer points to... never mind as that horse has been beaten to death too. At least I didn't write about Kane.