Pavelec, Jets get through tough stretch with flying colours

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This article was published 18/01/2015 (3888 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ondrej Pavelec sat slumped in his locker stall, the sweat still dripping from underneath his Winnipeg Jets hat a good half hour after the final horn had sounded following the club’s 25th win of the season.

And the look on his mug — it was the same for just about any other player who made an appearance in the dressing room following Sunday’s 4-3 shootout win over the Arizona Coyotes — was that of pure-satisfaction-meets-absolute-exhaustion.

Indeed, there were a lot of smiles underneath bloodshot eyes as the Jets completed their most-gruelling stretch of the 2014-15 campaign, a seven-games-in-11-days stretch that took them from Winnipeg to Arizona to California to Winnipeg to Texas to Chicago and back here to River City.

 

And they didn’t just survive, they thrived, going 5-1-1 and pulling into a tie with the Blackhawks, who have two games in hand, for fourth spot in the Western Conference.

“That was big, absolutely that was big,” began Pavelec. “Seven games in 11 nights, the time changes we had, the weather changes, the travel, the time spent on the plane. Sure, it is what it is. But with the guys that we have injured, I think we did a really good job. It’s not an excuse at all, because everybody has a stretch like this.

“But,” added Pavelec, pausing for emphasis, “last year… we wouldn’t have won those games. If you look at the standings, we’ve shown we can win against anybody. We’re winning as a team. That’s what we did tonight. It was all about the battle.”

Look, there’s a whole lot of race left before the Jets can even begin dreaming about a playoff spot. They know it, the coaches know it, the rest of the Western Conference knows it. The real push comes in February, March and — the Jets hope — April.

But, big picture here: For the Jets to be looking now at tracking down teams ahead of them instead of glancing in the rear-view mirror at those behind them says something of their maturation. And to have done it without their Top 4 defencemen for a long spell, without Evander Kane and now Mathieu Perreault also speaks of their resiliency.

Let’s face it, at the beginning of this season those two characteristics — whether this team could take another step and take a punch — were seen as two of its biggest flaws, not strengths.

“It’s kinda scary when you think about the guys we’ve lost to injuries this year,” said Bryan Little. “But guys have stepped in and played bigger roles than they’re used to and by now we know we can lose guys and have people step in and we can still get wins.”

That was the meat of a conversation Blake Wheeler was having with reporters after the morning skate Sunday — this notion this squad finally understands what type of game they need to play to be consistently successful. It’s not complicated on paper, but getting there on ice has been a real chore.

“I think we know who we are now, know what we’re capable of,” said Wheeler. “So that’s where it comes from, just that confidence that you can lose arguably your top four ‘D’ and just go out and outwork teams and still have a chance to win.

“When you get results, you’re going to be more confident. But we know who we are and that gives us confidence. We’re not searching for answers. When our game goes astray a little bit, we can say, this is not who we are, this is who we are and get back to it like that. That’s the biggest key, having that awareness of what makes us go.”

Now, there will be blips — no coach will be thrilled with blowing a 3-1 lead with just over six minutes left, as the Jets did against the Coyotes — but this is a bottom-line business and a ‘W’ is a ‘W’, even if it does paint over some flaws.

That’s exactly how coach Paul Maurice chose to frame everything afterwards, focussing on the body of work in the seven games in 11 days.

“I’m a really optimistic person,” said Maurice. “But if you had said we were going to 5-1-1 on this seven-game stretch. I’m not sure… I didn’t think that would necessarily have been possible.

“We’ve faced adversity twice so far this season: the injuries to our back end and this schedule and met it head on.”

So, no, the NHL doesn’t award survivor badges for stretches like this. But they can still be revealing. And that might explain why — as he exited the podium following his post-game media session late Sunday — Maurice grinned, even if it was just for a moment.

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPEdTait