Forget the battle of Laine vs. Matthews; it’s really Leafs vs. Jets – and Leafs win

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/02/2017 (3513 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s been a compelling sideshow in what has otherwise been a season of disappointment for Winnipeg Jets fans: who’s the better rookie — Jets winger Patrik Laine or Toronto Maple Leafs centre Auston Matthews?

With four goals in his past two games, including a second-period tally in Pittsburgh Thursday night that helped the Jets earn a point in a 4-3 overtime loss, Laine is tied with Matthews for the rookie goal-scoring lead with 27 and leads him by two points in the rookie points race with 48.

Laine has done all that despite having played four fewer games than Matthews because of a concussion.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, if I had a Calder Trophy vote — the award annually goes to the NHL’s top rookie — I’d cast it for Laine.

But sadly, it’s a rigged game — the sports media “intelligentsia” in this country resides in Toronto, as do a lot of Calder votes.

So the cold hard reality is that unless Laine blows Matthews away statistically between now and April, the Leafs kid is going to win the Calder under the guise of “more complete player.”

Matthews is nothing of the sort, in my view. But he is a centre, which means the game he plays, by necessity, looks more complete than the one Laine plays as the Jets’ sniper.

The comparison isn’t apples to oranges, it’s oranges to coconuts. And so penalizing Laine in the Calder voting because he doesn’t have enough citrus for your liking misses the point entirely.

But I digress — and, weirdly, that is my point: this overcooked Laine vs. Matthews debate has been one giant digression all season.

Because I’d argue the much more meaningful comparison this season — the one with real and lasting consequences for the Jets and their fans — was never Laine vs. Matthews, it was Jets vs. Leafs.

On that front, there is no real debate about which talented team of youngsters has had the better season — Leafs win.

Those two words have not been strung together in succession very often over the past 50 years, but there is no arguing with results this season. Heading into the weekend, the upstart Leafs are holding down a wild-card playoff spot in the Eastern Conference with a record of 26-19-11.

The Jets? They’ve got a record of just 26-29-5 and are currently ranked 24th in the NHL standings despite the fact they’ve played more games than every other team in the league, including four more than the Leafs.

So, yeah — Jets fans have Laine, but Leafs fans have Matthews and playoff tickets.

So why has a Toronto team that finished dead last in the NHL standings last season — the Jets finished 25th — leapfrogged the Jets into a playoff spot this season, while Winnipeg is exactly where it was last year in the standings?

(And I mean that quite literally — the Jets’ record coming into this week was identical to what it was after 58 games last season.)

The easy answer is to point fingers at the coaching.

Toronto’s Mike Babcock is an NHL coaching legend and it is not purely a coincidence the Leafs look poised to end decades of futility in just Babcock’s second year behind the Toronto bench, any more than it’s a coincidence the Detroit Red Wings — Babcock’s longtime former team — are about to miss the playoffs for the first time in 25 years.

Babcock is the league’s highest-paid coach. He signed an eight-year, $50 million contract with the Leafs for a reason: he is really, really good at his job.

Does that mean the Jets would be in a playoff spot today if Babcock had been behind the Winnipeg bench instead of Paul Maurice this season?

I’m not so sure. While there are things that would be different — I don’t think vets would get the free pass under Babcock they do under Maurice and there’s no way Babcock would let the kids run amok the way Maurice has — one thing that wouldn’t have been different is the most important thing of all: the lousy Jets goaltending.

That Pittsburgh game Thursday night was yet another example of how bad goaltending has killed the Jets this season. A careless rebound by Connor Hellebuyck less than a minute into the first period put the Jets down 1-0 before the game had barely begun.

Those kind of boneheaded backbreakers aren’t Maurice’s fault and I don’t see how you could argue it would have been different under Babcock.

Indeed, what’s much more to the point in this Jets-Leafs comparison is how the front offices of the two respective teams have handled their goaltending this season.

In Toronto, recognizing a dire need for good goaltending on a young team that was destined to make a lot of mistakes this season, the Leafs went out last summer and traded for Anaheim’s Frederik Andersen — a consistent veteran with huge upside — and signed him to a five-year deal. Goaltending problem solved.

Andersen has carried the load in Toronto this season, posting a .915 save percentage and 2.75 goals against average in 46 games, more than good enough on a Leafs team that is all about the high-octane, young offence.

And the Jets? They did the opposite, sending their veteran goalie to the minors before the season began and throwing up a Hail Mary that Hellebuyck, who was still basically a rookie this season, and Michael Hutchinson — a below-average NHL goaltender his entire career — would somehow combine to provide NHL-calibre goaltending.

It was a debacle, of course, with the Jets finally throwing in the towel on that ill-conceived plan last month, calling Ondrej Pavelec back up only to see him get hurt.

So let’s play pretend: give Babcock the goaltending Maurice had this season and Maurice the goaltending Babcock had this season. What does that look like?

We’ll never know for sure, but it seems fair to presume the scripts for both teams this season would read a lot differently.

So who’s to blame? Who knows how these goaltending decisions get made within organizations? All I know is this: in addition to Babcock, the Leafs also have another living NHL legend as their general manager in Lou Lamoriello, while the Jets have Kevin Cheveldayoff, who — let’s face it — is something short of a living NHL legend.

Now, hats off to Chevy for his record at the draft. It’s unassailable. But it’s also worth remembering this — Lamoriello already had three Stanley Cup rings, a World Series ring (he has a small stake in the New York Yankees) and was in the Hockey Hall of Fame as a builder when the Jets gave Cheveldayoff his first job as an NHL GM in 2011.

Our man is still learning, in other words; their man wrote the curriculum.

Make no mistake, and while the standings don’t reflect it, I believe this Jets team is significantly better than last year’s, and not just because of Laine.

Mark Scheifele has morphed this season into an elite NHL centre. Jacob Trouba has unequivocally answered any questions remaining about whether he has what it takes to be an elite NHL defenceman. Rookie Josh Morrissey is already the second best defenceman on the team. And Nikolaj Ehlers has shown legitimate flashes of greatness.

By most measures other than points in the standings, this is an unquestionably better Jets team.

Better than the Leafs?

You are what your record says you are and the league’s favourite laughingstock is a bona fide playoff contender right now while the Jets are an also-ran — again.

Jets fans are frustrated, for good reason. In Year 6 of this team’s return to Winnipeg, this team is about to miss the playoffs for the fifth time.

Fans are frustrated it’s taking so long and they’re frustrated that change in this organization is coming so painfully slow in a league where everyone else seems so bold.

That point was driven home again this week when the Montreal Canadiens, a team in first place in its division, fired head coach Michel Therrien and replaced him with Claude Julien.

The chastened Habs face the Jets today in Montreal.

Meanwhile back in Winnipeg, Maurice seems destined to get a contract extension this summer. I’m not saying that’s wrong. I’m just saying I understand why Jets fans might find rewarding mediocrity a little hard to take right now.

Alas, mediocrity is all too often the price of living in a city where the sign on the outskirts might as well read: Welcome to Winnipeg — It’s Good Enough.

Six years? We’re coming up on 150 years of that attitude in these parts.

And just remember this when you sit down in front of the TV Tuesday night to watch the Jets face the Leafs in Toronto: it took the Leafs five decades of futility to finally get things right.

Like it or not, we’re just getting started.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @PaulWiecek