The Winnipeg Jets had an awesome 56-win season, but whether the campaign will ultimately be deemed a success or a failure will depend solely on their playoff performance.
Jets 2024-25 Regular Season Full of Great Moments, But…
The Jets proved once again in 2024-25 they are a great regular-season team as they performed well above even the rosiest predictions from pundits and writers. First-year head coach Scott Arniel’s club scored tons of goals, defended stingily, got superb goaltending, and looked tight-knit and cohesive as a group.
There have been a ton of great moments: A record-setting hot start where they won 15 of their first 16 games. A franchise-long 11-game winning streak. 11 overtime wins. Clinching a playoff berth with 10 games to go. Finishing first in the Central Division and first in the Western Conference for the first time in 2.0 history. Winning the franchise’s first-ever Presidents’ Trophy. Capturing a team record 116 points. Repeating as William M. Jennings winners by allowing league’s fewest goals.
However, there has been an undeniable feeling of “ok, you’re doing this now, but…” surrounding it all.
The big “but” is: “but can you do it in the playoffs?”
Jets Can’t Make Another Early Exit with Cup Window Wide Open
The Jets have not proven that they can perform under the brightest of lights. Last season, they finished with 110 points and only four fewer wins than this season, only to be absolutely crushed by the Colorado Avalanche in the first round, a playoff-hardened club who ruthlessly exploited their every weakness.
A season before that, they were first in the Central Division and Western Conference at around the halfway point but suffered a prolonged second-half slump, tumbled all the way down to the second wild-card spot, and were quickly dispatched by the Vegas Golden Knights in the first round.
Those two playoff series followed eerily-similar scripts: win Game 1, lose four straight — and lose the last one specifically in a whimper — go home.
It can’t be that way this spring. A third-straight first-round exit when the Stanley Cup window is more wide open than it was then — and perhaps as wide open as it will ever be — would be unacceptable for a first-place team facing a second wild-card team in the St. Louis Blues, as hot as the Blues were since the 4 Nations Face-Off break. It would further and rightfully cement the conception the current core are chokers and too fragile for the long grind that winning a Cup requires.
The Jets also made a first-round exit in 2019 against the Blues and lost in the 2020 summer bubble qualifying round to the Calgary Flames. They have won just one of six playoff series they’ve participated in since their 2018 run to the Western Conference Final.
Internal Pressure Now External: Can Jets Rise Above It?
The postseason is when the intensity ramps up, every mistake is magnified, veterans can play an outsized importance, and the biggest stars need to shine their brightest. The Jets, who were at or near the top of the league since they began the season by rattling off 15 wins in their first 16 games, have spoken about how they have had to create that pressure for themselves internally to keep their standards high.
That pressure is now undoubtedly external, coming from opponents and Jets fans alike, the latter of whom are ready to bring the Winnipeg Whiteout back to Canada Life Centre and the surrounding streets.
The Jets played some intense hockey down the stretch in the battle for Western Conference supremacy with the Dallas Stars and for the Presidents’ Trophy with the Washington Capitals and came out on top. They should be feeling confident and ready for the time of year where the margin between success and failure can be one play, one goal, one inch.
However, they shouldn’t feel like they’ve accomplished anything yet, because they haven’t. At the end of the day, no one really cares which teams won the Presidents’ Trophy or had franchise-best seasons. They care about who was the last team standing and hoisted the hardest trophy in professional sports to win.
As Arniel said after the Jets clinched the most points in the league: “we’re still going to be judged on what happens from Game 83 on.”
Related: Jets Glad to Win Presidents’ Trophy But Remain Focused on Winning Stanley Cup
Can the Jets rise to the occasion and make a deep run, or will it be another wasted “what-if” season? We, and they, are soon to find out.