Short-term pain for long-term gain

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This article was published 25/04/2021 (1646 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Jets likely aren’t going very far in the playoffs without big contributions from Mark Scheifele. For Exhibit A, just look at their speedy elimination round exit last summer from the bubble in Edmonton, where a series-ending injury on his third shift of the first period spelled doom.

For that reason, coach Paul Maurice is clearly willing to risk some short-term pain if he believes it will lead to long-term gain.

That became clear on Saturday when he stapled Scheifele, his No. 1 centre, to the bench for much of the second period in what turned out to be a 4-1 loss to Toronto. In a hockey-mad market like Winnipeg, on a nationally-televised Hockey Night In Canada broadcast, and with Auston Matthews and the high-profile Maple Leafs in town, this wasn’t just the equivalent of a lit match being tossed by Maurice in the direction of his sluggish squad. It was a live grenade.

“It’s a message that no one’s safe, that you have to prove yourself every night and bring your A-game, or at least bring your battle intensity every night,” Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck told me after his club lost a third straight game in regulation for the first time all season, pretty much ending any hopes they had of catching Toronto for first place in the all-Canadian division.

Hellebuyck knows a thing or two about sending and receiving messages. He got one loud and clear last Thursday, when Maurice gave him the early hook after three of the first six Toronto shots he faced snuck past him. He wasn’t happy about it, but responded with a solid 32-save effort Saturday.

It’s one thing to replace your starting goalie during a rare off-night, even if he does have a Vezina Trophy on his resume. It’s another matter entirely to make a superstar and team MVP candidate like Scheifele ride the pine, especially on such a prominent stage.

I’ll be honest, folks. I figured Scheifele was one of two untouchables on this team, the other being captain Blake Wheeler, who would never be publicly admonished by Maurice for any on-ice missteps, regardless of how deserving they might be of such a sanction. Maurice and Wheeler have talked about going through brick walls for each other, and Maurice has previously proclaimed a statue of Scheifele will one day be built outside the downtown rink.

So when the team’s leading scorer stayed out for an extended shift during four-on-four play Saturday, as he’s often prone to do in an attempt to find some offence, I didn’t think much of it. And when a tired Scheifele coasted back to the bench for a long overdue line change that created an odd-man rush and a John Tavares goal that turned a 2-1 deficit into a 3-1 hole, I fully expected it would just be business as usual.

Ka-boom.

Colour me surprised that Maurice went to a page in the coach’s playbook that we rarely see him utilize in the form of a high-profile benching. Unlike someone like John Tortorella, who has taken to both sitting players and then shredding them publicly — both Pierre-Luc Dubois and Patrik Laine have stories to tell — Maurice took a more tactful approach with Scheifele. In explaining the decision, he found a way to sneak in some praise while dishing out some tough love.

“We have some things that we value as a group. Mark’s a real competitive guy. Sometimes that gets the best of him I think. We just need to adhere to our core values,” said Maurice.

There’s no question this is going to leave a mark on a proud player like Scheifele. To what extent remains to be seen. The team didn’t make him available following Saturday’s game, and they had a full off-day with no availability on Sunday. We’ll see if media requests to talk with Scheifele on Monday are met, or ignored, prior to their game against Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers at Bell MTS Place.

My unsolicited advice to the team would be to put him front and centre in front of the Zoom following the morning skate to address the elephant in the room. Otherwise, a story with plenty of legs already will continue to hang over the club like a dark cloud.

Of course, it’s not what Scheifele says, but what he does, which will ultimately determine whether this gamble paid off.

“This is going to be a big character build for us as team. You never know how much adversity you go through, and we seem to keep going through little spurts of adversity. Hopefully, we come back from this stronger. We have the character to do that and it’s time for us to learn and prove it,” Hellebuyck said.

The early signs are promising, as Scheifele showed plenty of fire in his belly when the shackles were finally removed for the third period against Toronto. They’ll need a lot more of that, especially once the playoffs begin in mid-May and the Jets are likely facing either Toronto or Edmonton in the first round.

Some will paint this as a desperate move from a desperate coach, one who has run out of answers for a skilled but flawed squad. I view it more as a matter of practicing what you preach, of pushing principles such as accountability and ensuring everyone — regardless of role or salary or stature — is pulling in the right direction when the games really start to matter.

If anything, it’s long overdue around here, especially for a group that doesn’t always follow the fundamentals that are needed to ultimately win a championship.

“I like this group. I like Mark. I like all of them. We just have to adhere to those things. Now is the time to make sure we get it right. Now is the time to dial in those parts of our game, especially when you lose three in a row, this is the perfect time to handle your problems, to deal with it when you’re going into the stretch,” Maurice said.

“We haven’t had that stretch, fortunately, knock on wood, where we’ve had a run of injuries or had bad, negative feelings sitting in our room. You hate losing hockey games, but you got an opportunity to deal with it now and talk about it and get it out there and get our energy level right.”

Charles de Gaulle famously said “France has lost the battle, but she has not lost the war.” It would appear Maurice has adopted a similar mindset when it comes to his team With an eight-point lead over fourth-place Montreal and a 12-point buffer over fifth-place Calgary, Winnipeg is pretty secure in the knowledge they’re going to finish first (not very likely now), second or third in the division.

No, sitting Scheifele for most of the middle frame on Saturday didn’t help the cause when it comes to potentially rallying for a victory over Toronto. But the bigger issue here is how he, and his teammates, play in Game 1 of the playoffs, not Game 47 of the regular-season.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg