It’s become an unfortunate annual tradition: the Winnipeg Jets falling into a slump as soon as the second half of the season arrives. In what is a serious case of deja-vu, the downturn seems to have arrived right on cue.
Once-First-Place Jets Now Look Lost
The Jets have lost five straight games and look nothing like the “wagon” that just a month ago was on top of the entire NHL thanks to a dominant first half.
The team hasn’t won since Jan. 20 and prior to the All-Star Break, fell to the Toronto Maple Leafs, Boston Bruins, and Maple Leafs again. Those losses — two in regulation and one in overtime — were somewhat understandable as they were dealing with injuries to key personnel and at the end of a gruelling stretch.
What is not understandable is how poorly they’ve played coming out of their nine-day break. In a 3-0 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Feb. 6 and a 4-1 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on Feb. 8, the Jets appeared to have their minds still on the sunny locales they arrived back from; instead of looking fresh and poised for a strong stretch run, they have looked truly complacent for first time all season.
Defence, Goal Scorers, Special Teams All Struggling
The Jets haven’t had any facet of their game firing over the losing streak and some alarming trends have emerged over the past three weeks.
Their stifling defensive structure — the structure that led to them posting an impressive 34-game streak of allowing three goals or fewer from early November through mid-January — is breaking down with regularity and allowing an uncharacteristically-high number of dangerous chances. They have allowed 16 goals over the five losses.
Meanwhile, they have lit the lamp just four times in the five losses, have been shut out in four of their past eight games, and scored just 12 in their past nine (in which they’ve gone 3-5-1.)
Again, the goal-scoring struggles may have been understandable when Mark Scheifele and Gabriel Vilardi were out, but not with the Jets currently icing their deepest and healthiest lineup of the season. Scheifele, Vilardi, and Kyle Connor are all back and the team added Sean Monahan in a trade with the Montreal Canadiens, who has recorded as many as 82 points in a season.
The secondary scoring has completely dried up. General manager Kevin Cheveldayoff worked hard in the offseason to deepen his group of forwards, and through the first half, their contributions on the scoresheet were key to success. But now, the droughts are long for many, who must be gripping their sticks tighter than ever. Nino Niederreiter hasn’t scored in 15 games, Alex Iafallo hasn’t scored in 13, Morgan Barron hasn’t scored in 12, Adam Lowry hasn’t scored in 10, and Cole Perfetti hasn’t scored in eight.
The Jets have been one of the best teams at five-on-five this season but have struggled with special teams. Now that the even-strength goals have dried up, the lack of special teams success is looming even larger.
The Jets’ hapless power play is zero-for-14 in the five-game losing streak and an inglorious one-for-30 in its past nine games. Unlike in football, they can not decline penalties, but if head coach Rick Bowness could, he probably would as his team owns the league’s seventh-worst power play with a 15.03 per cent efficiency and just as often kills momentum as it builds it. The power play reached true “unmade bed” status in the second period against the Flyers, when Monahan won the faceoff back to the blue line but Kyle Connor and Neal Pionk banged into each other, leading to a shorthanded goal for Ryan Poehling a few seconds later.
The penalty kill has broken down at key moments. While they killed off all four of their infractions against the Flyers — one of the lone bright spots — they have allowed four costly ones in the five-game losing streak: two to the Maple Leafs on Jan. 27 in the third period that turned a 1-1 tie into a 3-1 Maple Leafs’ lead, and two goals to the Penguins during the major penalty to Brenden Dillon that turned a tight 1-0 deficit into an insurmountable 3-0 one.
Slump Eerily Similar to Last Season’s
As we said off the top, this is far from the first time this has happened. You might have to add “Jets second-half slump” to death and taxes as the only guarantees in life.
On Jan. 12 of this year, the Jets sat atop the Central Division and Western Conference with a 28-9-4 record. They are now 30-14-5, third in the Central, and fifth in the Western Conference, eight points behind the Vancouver Canucks for first.
Last season, the Jets were in a near identical situation: after going 29-14-1 through Jan. 16, they sat on top of the Western Conference. However they reverted to old bad habits, went 17-19-2 from there, and tumbled down the standings as a result. They just snuck into the playoffs in the second wild-card spot, and were quickly dispatched by the Golden Knights in the first round. That’s when a rebuild and a sharp change from the stale status quo seemed inevitable.
The Jets also experienced a listless and lifeless stretch ahead of the playoffs in 2019, when the locker-room divide — remember then-head-coach Paul Maurice’s “ruffled feathers” comment that indicated some weren’t listening to him? — and work ethic problems that would end up plaguing them for five seasons first emerged. They fell out of first place in the Central owing to their lethargy and lost in the first round to the eventual Stanley-Cup champion St. Louis Blues.
Jets Have Chance Prove They’re Different And Stop Slide Before It Becomes Disastrous
As a result of knowing their history, much of the Jets’ fan base — and this author — have been warily anticipating the other skate to drop and repeatedly warning the Jets haven’t accomplished anything yet. This poor stretch has once again done some damage to the narrative the Jets are finally for real.
No team, not even the best of the best, gets through an entire 82-game season without struggling at some point, and this is the first prolonged losing streak the Jets have faced this season. The Jets aren’t suddenly a bad team, but are certainly playing like one, and have to find a way to apply the lessons learned from last season to nip this slide in the bud before it goes on much longer. Cheveldayoff put his faith in the team by trading away a first-round pick — something he rarely does — for Monahan, signalling his faith and his high expectations. They cannot allow this season to go down the drain.
Related: Cheveldayoff Puts Faith in Jets With Rare Trade of 1st-Round Pick
The Jets have appeared more mature and balanced this season than last with Lowry as the new captain and there doesn’t appear to be anyone rowing in the opposite direction now that Pierre-Luc Dubois and Blake Wheeler are gone. However, there’s no way — in this author’s opinion, at least — a feeling of deja-vu hasn’t crept into the players’ minds as it has with the fans.
Dylan DeMelo, for one, believes the Jets can get back to obeying the blueprint for success that served them well in the first half.
“This group, we can handle adversity. We feel confident with that. We’re learning every day here. We’re going to continue to get better. And we’ll get out of this little rut together,” the defenseman said after the loss to the Flyers.
“Throughout the season, there’s an expectation. There’s a structure that we’ve been dominant (with) when we’re doing it and we’ve kind of gotten away from it the last couple of weeks,” Lowry added. “It starts with all of us. There’s things individually we can all clean up and then there’s things structurally that we can all clean up. I think some of it’s just being ready to go right off the hop.”
The Jets still have the runway to correct this skid — a five-game losing streak does not an entire bad back half make and they still have 33 games to go — and they’ve built themselves up a nice cushion when it comes to playoff positioning. If they can find the strength of character to get back on track, they should be alright, but every game they don’t, the “here-we-go-again” feelings among the fan base will get stronger and more justified.
