November kicks Jets’ butts

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This article was published 29/11/2015 (3631 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The clear winner was the schedule — the Winnipeg Jets were no match for the month of November.

Managing a 4-9-1 record over the course of a month in which they had 10 road games and only four home games, a young team with a new look just wasn’t good enough to overcome.

The Jets stand 11-12-2 as the calendar turns to December, a month that has a more reasonable mix of games but one which No. 1 goalie Ondrej Pavelec will miss due to injury.

The Jets are outside the playoff line through 25 games. Skip the next two paragraphs if that’s enough cold reality for you.

Outside of Winnipeg there isn’t a lot of surprise. During the three-game trip just completed, one that yielded one win in three games, a veteran NHL scout made the following observation.

“That team has the lowest payroll in the league,” he said. “And if you think right now it’s contender material, you’re way ahead of yourself.”

Catching up, then, and moving along the never-straight line of progress is the priority now, one that was the basis for discussion after the three-game road trip ended with Saturday’s 5-3 loss in Colorado.

“There should be an understanding, and it’s tough to say right now, but there is a better understanding of how we need to play,” Jets captain Andrew Ladd said about the last 10 days or so that has brought the team’s most-troubling defensive deficiencies into focus. “I don’t think we’re quite there yet but we’re working on it every day to get to that point.”

The team’s defensive execution last Friday in Minnesota will be the hope and the model for some weeks to come.

In allowing a club-record-low 15 shots on goal, what was on display was the team the Jets want to be regularly, not once a month. It was the team they were for a large portion of last season, not surprisingly resulting in a playoff spot.

The November schedule has been a factor in the discussion of where the Jets are today. Excuse or not, you choose, but it was real and it was difficult and it leaves the Jets with the most road games played in the 30-team league and also the NHL’s biggest deficiency of road versus home games.

“Yeah, we’ve had a tough go here,” Ladd said. “Are we satisfied with where we’re at? No. We could have come up with a few more wins. But now we have a pretty good schedule in the month of December and we need to take advantage of that and get to that level of play we need where we’re strong defensively every night.”

The schedule doesn’t just flip into a yellow-brick road, but is decidedly more friendly.

If you lump today’s back-to-work session on the ice into the December segment, it starts with two practices — a relative paradise — and shows five road games and seven games at the MTS Centre.

The Toronto Maple Leafs kick things off with a visit Wednesday.

The schedule deficiency of home games trends better in December. It comes back to near even (17-19) before a five-game road trip begins on New Year’s Eve, and rallies again all the way to near even (24-25) by the NHL’s all-star break at the end of January.

At which point, the Jets will play eight of the next 12 on the road.

It is March where the real makeup takes place.

Will the Jets be able to navigate the air miles and their own goals-against shortcomings to remain in the playoff discussion until then?

Jets coach Paul Maurice won’t get drawn into the long-range projection, preferring a very short focus.

“We’ll see,” he said. “We certainly have a good understanding of what we’re trying to do. We got out of (November) and we’re not in the playoffs but we’re close enough to that fight that we’ll just keep going. We have a pretty good idea of how we’re supposed to play.”

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca