|
It’s a season that started off with such hope, the freshly won President’s Trophy banner hanging from the rafters, largely the same core of players as that league-topping season and fans’ newfound enthusiasm for paying big bucks for access to the downtown barn.
For the first time since the COVID season, the Jets won a playoff series, and in the most dramatic way possible: a Cole Perfetti Game 7-tying goal with 1.6 seconds left and an Adam Lowry winner in double OT.
The Jets’ hopes of finally finding playoff success are fading faster than an equatorial sunset: one second, they’re shining bright; the next is pure darkness. They’ll be lucky to qualify for the playoffs, let alone win a series. If they do qualify, there’s a good chance the first-round opponent is Colorado and in all likelihood yet another one-and-done playoff appearance.
Advertisement
If anything, the train wreck that has followed that amazing season is a stark reminder that in business — any business, including pro hockey — your customers’ key question is always, “What have you done for me lately?”
The answer? Not much. Jets attendance is down and the fans that remain seem deflated, as colleague Mike McIntyre reported recently.
Few things help sell beer and Jets Dogs more than a winning team, so what has been the effect on concession sales?
The look on Jets defenceman Josh Morrissey’s face as Buffalo Sabres’ Jason Zucker celebrates a goal in a 5-1 blowout loss in Buffalo could be a microcosm of this season. (Jeffrey T. Barnes / The Associated Press files)
There are a few lessons businesses can take from this, not the least of which is that regardless which business you’re in, regardless how respected its leader — Mark Chipman one day deserves a statue — and regardless how much positive energy you bring to the community, it’s your customer-facing staff who are going to define your success.
By all accounts, the Jets treat their staff exceptionally well. Such is evident in the number of players who — despite all the rhetoric of players not wanting to come to Winnipeg — re-up their contracts to stay.
That said, it’s axiomatic in business that the best way to deflate morale among your good staff is to tolerate half-hearted efforts by others. Will the players still carrying water decide it’s no longer worth it?
It’s not that the Jets are in a bad workplace, but in business, if your staff is struggling, you can’t have high hopes for success. If your team is underperforming, it’s up to you to fix it.
You can hide behind empty platitudes such as “the fix must come from within” only for so long.
That said, I’ll end on an optimistic note, hopeless optimist that I am: you learn more from adversity than success, and the Jets have had a lot of adversity. So there’s hope that a hard-fought playoff appearance by an arguably skilled team has more potential than having skated in as the league’s No.1 team.
|
