The Jets are coming off their worst loss of the season, a 7-1 beatdown in Montreal Saturday. They get to follow that up with three straight road games against the NHL leading Toronto Maple Leafs.

While their upcoming three-game series with the Leafs will undoubtedly be challenging, it get can’t get any worse than Saturday.

Right?

“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a game where every player was [a] minus,” head coach Paul Maurice said.

While I think plus/minus is a useless misleading stat, it is extremely rare that every skater on the roster in a game finished a minus player.

“I don’t know in 25 years that I’ve ever seen that,” added Maurice. “And two goalies played. So we had this whole thing nicely spread out across the board.”

The Jets had a scheduled off day Sunday before getting back at it Monday, looking to correct some of their wrongdoings from Saturday, and moving forward on an ugly loss.

"We had a real tough game and now we want to come back and get on the right track again, with the full awareness that we're going to see a real quality team," said Maurice.

It’s a highly anticipated series between the top two teams in Scotia North division. Trailing the Maple Leafs by seven points entering Tuesday, this upcoming series provides the Jets with an opportunity to cut into Toronto’s division lead.

“Anytime you play a team that’s one or two in the division, you know that you’ve got to be at your best to beat them. It’s different this year because there’s only one first place team you see and you’re trying to chase them,” said Maurice.

The Maple Leafs come into Tuesday’s game after back-to-back losses to the Vancouver Canucks. Like the Jets, the Maple Leafs are coming into the series opener Tuesday hungry for two points.

“They’re fun to play against, but you just have to be careful,” said Paul Stastny. “There are some guys on our team and their team probably, too, that want to play that run-and-gun style and trade chance for chance, but I think that’s a dangerous game to play.”

The Jets have seen the Maple Leafs one time prior this season, a 3-1 loss on Jan. 18.

"I think looking back to that first game, we didn't play very good that night. I think we're a lot better team than kind of what we showed. We're getting a lot closer to the identity and the way we want to play,” said Adam Lowry.

“That's big, that's fast and kind of imposing our will and that's from controlling the puck and playing with pace. That's going to be something we try and do."

When the two met back in January, it was just the second game of the Jets season. Obviously things have changed in Winnipeg. It seems over the last few weeks the Jets have figured out their identity and are certainly a different team than they were on that night.

“Both their team and our team have made real improvements in the last month, from training camp to now, in the style of play. The test here is which team has come farther along in limiting the other offensive players,” said Maurice.

“That’s what will be on display. Both teams are going to get their chances. It will be who can control the other team for the longest?”

We could learn a lot about who the 2020-21 Winnipeg Jets really are this week.

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