If Jets aren’t close by U.S. Thanksgiving, expect a turkey

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This article was published 02/11/2016 (3357 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WASHINGTON. D.C. — The captain wishes to advise everything is going to be fine.

“We’ve played pretty well recently and I think we’re happy with where our game is going,” Jets winger Blake Wheeler said at the MTS Centre Tuesday night, minutes after his club lost a 3-2 heartbreaker to the Washington Capitals that dropped the Jets season record to 4-6 — the club’s second-worst start to a season since they returned to Winnipeg.

If those two things seem incongruent — everything is fine, but the Jets are off to their second-worst start in 2.0 history — well, maybe that’s because they are incongruent.

But let’s give Wheeler the benefit the doubt here. Yeah, the Jets are losing more than they win and consistently falling behind early, but man has this club ever shown heart in the third period. Yeah, the power play is ranked 25th in the league in goals, but did you know it leads in shots? Yeah, they haven’t been scoring much, but did you see those 45 shots Tuesday night against a Capitals team that is expected to challenge for the Stanley Cup this season?

See how that works?

But here’s the issue — even if you accept Wheeler’s contention everything is going to be fine eventually, the cold hard fact is that things are very definitely not going to be fine unless they get fine very, very soon.

If that sounds alarmist just 10 games into a very young NHL season, well then you need to consider the following:

NHL history shows if your team isn’t in the playoffs by American Thanksgiving, which falls on Nov. 24 this year, then the odds are overwhelmingly against your team being in the playoffs come April.

A Hockey News study a few years back crunched the numbers over a 10-year period and found of the combined 160 teams who made the playoffs at season’s end during that period, just 41 weren’t already in a playoff position at Thanksgiving.

And of those 41 who rallied to make the playoffs, 22 were just two points or less out of a playoff spot at Thanksgiving. Five points or more out of a playoff spot come Thanksgiving? Forget about it — just two teams in that position rallied to make the playoffs in the 10-year period.

All of which makes the three-game Jets road trip that begins here Thursday night — and continues on to Detroit on Friday and then Madison Square Garden on Sunday — a lot more critical than you might think for games numbered 11-13 on an 82-game schedule.

How critical? Well, you just have to look back to this time last year to see what can happen to a Jets team that gets swept on a road trip in November.

It’s worth remembering after a lovely 7-3-1 start to the season last October, the Jets came unravelled the following month during a four-game road swing  through the Central Division that saw them get swept in succession during stops in Minnesota, Dallas, Nashville and St. Louis.

By month’s end, a 7-3-1 October had been irretrievably sullied by a 4-9-1 November and a Jets season that had begun with such promise was effectively over by, you guessed it, American Thanksgiving.

And remember, that was in a season in which the Jets actually had a strong start. This season, suffice to say, has not seen a strong start.

Because not only are the Jets 4-6 and already looking up at a playoff spot, they’ve posted that record in what has actually been a soft early schedule. Six of Winnipeg’s first nine opponents this year were non-playoff teams last season, while seven of the Jets first 10 games were at home.

Out in Killarney, they will say you always need to make hay while the sun is shining. The Jets did not do this and now, with storm clouds on the horizon, the loft is a bit empty as the Jets find themselves in a gruelling stretch that sees them play 19 games in 33 days, while crossing the border eight times and changing time zones 10 times.

That is an insanely difficult schedule for any team, much less one as young as this Jets squad, much less one that is just 4-6 right now and already under intense pressure to get things right — and quickly.

But hey, what do I know. The captain says everything is going to be fine. He’d better be right, because I’m already hearing a lot of frantic gobbling down here.

American turkeys are in a run for their lives right now. History suggests the Jets will be, too, when they drop the puck here Thursday night.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca 

Twitter: @PaulWiecek