Road improvements

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/12/2015 (3609 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With wins in six of their last eight games at the MTS Centre, the Winnipeg Jets have quietly built a respectable 9-5-1 home record.

The anchor that has dragged this team to the bottom of the Central Division has been their performance on the road, where the Jets are just 6-10-1 this season.

That’s not only the worst road record in the Central, it’s also one of the worst road records in the NHL — 26th, ahead of only Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Anaheim.

You know what else those five teams have in common? If the season ended today, the only playoff action they’d see would be on television.

All of which is to say if the Jets intend to play their way back into the playoff race, it begins with playing better on the road. And with seven of their next nine games on the road — including the next two — that time is now.

The Jets have road dates in Edmonton and Calgary tonight and Tuesday, followed by the Christmas break and a pair of home dates with the Pittsburgh Penguins and Detroit Red Wings between Christmas and the new year.

Then it’s back on the road for a gruelling trip that will see the Jets play five games in eight nights in Arizona, San Jose, Anaheim, Nashville and Dallas respectively.

That’s a lot of road games all at once for a team that’s 2-9-1 in their last dozen games away from home. So it’s not hard to see how the hole the Jets have dug themselves on the road could get much, much deeper the next couple weeks.

At the same time, it’s also a golden opportunity for this team to rediscover their inner road warrior — they opened the season 4-1 on the road — and put things right heading into the new year.

It’s time to man up, in other words. And they know it.

‘Home and away is tough to explain sometimes. One year, you’re good on the road and not good at home — and then you switch’

— Jets defenceman Mark Stuart

“That’s the thing — on the road, you can get on a roll,” Jets defenceman Mark Stuart said Sunday after his club’s practice at the MTS Iceplex.

“You play well in that first game on a road trip and you’re together as a team… you don’t have to worry about anything else but hockey and concentrating on the games. You can get on a roll and that’s what we need to do.”

Stuart said his club’s road record is still being dragged down by a disastrous four-game swing through the Central Division last month that saw the Jets swept. And he’s right — if Winnipeg had even split that road trip, they’d be .500 on the road now and you’d be reading a different story today.

But you are what your road and home records say you are, even if — as Stuart maintains — it’s sometimes hard to figure out why teams go through runs in which they excel at one and struggle at the other.

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“Home and away is tough to explain sometimes. One year, you’re really good on the road and not good at home — and then you switch. I don’t really look too much into that, to be honest with you.

“You’re trying to play the same way, no matter where you’re playing.”

But are you really? Jets forward Drew Stafford said there’s a simpler style required to play effectively on the road — and he thinks Winnipeg’s struggles to master it this season are part of the reason their road record is what it is.

“Mainly, when you play on the road, you want to keep things simple, you want to make sure you’re playing well through the neutral zone and taking care of the puck,” says Stafford. “And we might have gotten away from that a little bit on the road, when some other teams are jacked up to play in their building.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @PaulWiecek