Remember the love?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/04/2017 (3161 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FOUR years from now, or slightly longer, an enterprising writer will publish a glossy book about the Winnipeg Jets’ first decade back in the city. (This is assuming there are still printed books in that not-so-distant future. If there are not, replace the word “glossy” with “digitally glowing.”)

In that inevitable retrospective, 2016-17 will fill a grey inner chapter. It will come just as readers are tempted to flip to later pages. Anticipating this, the author will try to lure them back with evocative metaphors, and those metaphors will make the season seem more interesting than it was.

So, this will be remembered as the year the fire went out of MTS Centre, the year the self-appointed loudest building in the NHL became acquainted with awkward silence, the year that — with regards to John K. Samson — fans in seats began to go missing like teeth.

Remember when tickets to a game, any game, were only slightly less precious than an original Picasso? Remember when you’d admire them in your hands, as if Willy Wonka had bought the team and this was the Golden Ticket? Every few nights, just over 15,000 of us got to feel like a hockey Charlie Bucket.

It’ll be fun to tell kids about that, someday. After this season, we know those euphoric days are truly over. Other than a certain Finnish player who played in a flash-like manner in his rookie season — sounds familiar for some reason, can’t quite put a finger on it — we will primarily remember this campaign for its repetition.

This will be the one where the Jets fell out of the playoff race, again. The one where fans clung to the hope of bright, young talent again. The one where fans were asked, again, to empty their wallets for the hope of a future. It’s an unusual reversal of a typical mattress salesman’s pitch: five years in, the Jets are offering pay now, buy later.

And when their season ends tonight, with a 6 p.m. home game against the playoff-bound Nashville Predators, it will feel almost merciful.

Fans will cheer the players off to another early summer, then shrug and wander out of the arena. They’ll think about ordering a pizza. They’ll begin to let their mind wander off the Jets.

This week, I asked a friend to name his favourite part of the 2016-17 season. “It’s almost over,” he said.

So here we are, in the doldrums of that inevitable future retrospective.

After six seasons, we’ve learned many things about this team and its players. But we have also learned something about growing expectations: we always hoped the Jets would be more than plucky also-rans. We longed for them to become our winter salvation.

The Jets were always bound to disappoint us. We loved them not for who they were, but as a promise.

Truth is, we didn’t see their face until we were standing at the altar. We signed the papers anyway. We married that team, took it on a honeymoon and got sloshed on margaritas.

It seemed like a good match, under those whirlwind conditions: somewhere in the shiny getting-to-know-you smiles, it sure did feel like love.

For a few years, that heady infatuation was enough. Then came 2014-15, and its thrilling playoff push. They didn’t win a single game in that post-season, getting swept by the Anaheim Ducks, but the fact they’d made it there was enough. If Kevin Cheveldayoff wanted fans to trust the process, that trust seemed to be paying off.

Oh, what a difference a couple of years makes.

This season, fan restlessness became palpable. The Heritage Classic temporarily soothed that growing disquiet and healed the broken narrative of Jets history. On the other hand, the alumni game’s nostalgia stood in contrast against the mounting pressure of the present.

All too often, the first NHL team called the Winnipeg Jets ended their seasons with a whimper. This time, we want more. This year, we didn’t get it; in late March, my colleague Jason Bell wrote a piece entitled, Still plenty of reasons to stay tuned to the Jets.

With a headline like that, you know the dream is over.

It’s not that Jay was wrong about any of the dangled (and dangling) carrots that kept fans chasing every play.

Watching Patrik Laine was pure joy, regardless of what happens with the Calder. Nik Ehlers showed a spark that bodes well for his future. The farm is sprouting a bumper crop of youngsters: Jack Roslovic, Kyle Connor.

This was also the year Mark Scheifele, who slowly (but steadily) heated up since his 2011 draft, finally boiled over.

Indeed, Scheifele’s performance vindicated every Jets fan who spent five long years in the trenches of hockey forums, doing battle against legions of No. 55 skeptics.

Know how hard it is to silence online hockey critics?

Well, Scheifele’s 80-plus points (this column was written on Wednesday) oughta do it… mostly. Look, we’re talking online forums. Some people complain about everything.

So those are all good things, hopeful things, things that let us hold onto the belief that these Jets will someday be the team we hoped to marry.

How soon will that be? No one can really say.

How many more decent draft picks will it take? If we go by Edmonton as an example… uh, let’s hope we’re not going by Edmonton as an example.

Meanwhile, as the Jets pack their bags for another early summer, fans can take some solace in this: by wanting more —now, not later — a hockey-loving city is coming into its own.

Not so long ago, it was enough just to see Winnipeg in the show; now, it begins to demand a spot in the heart of the discussion.

If there is to be a book written about the first decade of the reborn Jets, this will be a grey chapter.

There may be a redemption arc to come, one that ends in burnished silver Cups. Or maybe that redemption never comes. Either way, we fell in love with a team, once — and it’s not too much to ask that the relationship stays fun.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca