Schedule hasn’t done Jets any favours

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This article was published 18/03/2016 (3545 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you’re trying to determine which segment of the Winnipeg Jets’ 2015-16 schedule is the worst, at least you’ve got plenty of choices.

Tonight marks the end of another bizarre stretch for the Jets — it will be their fifth-straight game requiring a time-zone change.

The Jets are home tonight against the Chicago Blackhawks, starting a four-game homestand.

This is the second time this season the Jets have changed time zones for five straight games.

Last week, they started this latest time-shifting. After a home game against Nashville, the team went to Detroit, came back to Winnipeg, went to Vancouver, then Calgary and now comes back to Winnipeg. All in the span of less than eight days.

This season’s schedule isn’t the reason the Jets are last in the Central Division with a 29-36-5 mark, but it has certainly exposed their weaknesses in many ways.

Those cracks began fairly early, starting with the team’s road schedule in the beginning.

The NHL handed Winnipeg its first eight road games in back-to-back scenarios, then piled on with a stretch of games from Oct. 31 to Nov. 28 that saw 11 road games and just four home games.

Winnipeg’s November record turned out to be a killer, 4-9-1.

Also this season, despite their existence in the spread-out geography of the Western Conference, the NHL brought the Jets back to Winnipeg for just one home gave on five different occasions, ending with last Saturday’s game against Colorado.

At the half-way point of their season, the Jets had the fewest home games played (17) and the most road games played (24), which gave them the biggest discrepancy in the 30-team NHL.

And it had nine back-to-backs in the first half out of a total of 12 on the season.

Keeping in mind every team has its schedule challenges, complaints are pretty much universal among the 30 teams.

What can be done about this is easy to figure out — very little.

The NHL schedule is a complex exercise every year based on building availabilities, a set requirement for in-division and in-conference games and the extra web of television scheduling requirements.

Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff was asked about this season’s challenges and chose the high road in his answer.

“You are at the mercy of several things,” Cheveldayoff said. “First is your building. We’re fortunate. We have a pretty blank slate. Yes, we have concerts but we manage our building so our priority is to help the hockey team with dates.

“As far as what you can influence, the first time you really see it (schedule) is when it’s almost in complete form. Outside of structural things, it’s very, very difficult to change. You can send some things to the league and tell them this or that doesn’t work or that we don’t like this, but the function of where we are, the division we’re in … lots of teams do things like this but don’t have the travel.

“Our location is part and parcel of what our schedule is as well. Ironically, from charting the miles and wear and tear, the schedule for us was much easier when we were in the east than in the west.

“Generally speaking, the western teams do a lot of travelling, a much greater distance.”

The only hope for the future is that the NHL might lay off such a concentration of back-to-back games, refrain from so many heavy clusters of road or home games and find a way to make teams on the travel-heavy side of the league play fewer one-only homestands.

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Another injury has led the Winnipeg Jets to make another recall from their AHL affiliate, the Manitoba Moose.

Centre Nic Petan will be joining the roster for tonight’s game at the MTS Centre against the Chicago Blackhawks.

Petan is recalled under emergency conditions, which are likely the result of an injury to forward J.C. Lipon. Lipon was unable to finish Tuesday’s 4-1 loss in Calgary.

Petan, the Jets’ second-round pick in the 2013 NHL Draft, started the season in the NHL and scored his first NHL goal. He played 14 games before being assigned to the Moose.

With the Moose, Petan had nine goals and 32 points in his rookie professional year.

The Jets also announced Thursday defenceman Julian Melchiori is being reassigned to the Moose after emergency conditions ended on defence.

Melchiori played one game on this recall, Monday in Vancouver against the Canucks.

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca