Jets’ season fades to black — again

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This article was published 04/05/2024 (760 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“They constantly toy with us, giving us tantalizing hints of what may be possible and then fail to deliver when it counts in the playoffs.” Bill Craig, Letters to the Editor, Free Press, May 1.

There are two seasons in the National Hockey League, the regular season and the playoffs.

In the end, only the latter matters.

Regardless of how you feel about Mr. Craig’s letter to the editor of this newspaper, you have to agree with his key point.

The Winnipeg Jets have a habit of giving fans the impression, during the regular season, that the team could go all the way. All the way in hockey has only one definition — the Stanley Cup.

It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about the first incarnation of the Winnipeg Jets or the current team that draws massively enthusiastic white-outs in this era.

The truth is they have never won a Stanley Cup.

You don’t need to be a statistician to know that we are not alone in the NHL. Several teams haven’t won Lord Stanley’s great gift to hockey culture. Beyond that, many NHL teams who have had their names etched in silver have been suffering multi-generational droughts. The most famous member of that less-than-distinguished club is the Toronto Maple Leafs.

They haven’t won a cup since Bobbie Gentry sang Ode to Billie Joe, Tom Jones wailed Green Green Grass of Home and Jimmy Hendrix howled Hey Joe!

Even if you’re a boomer, 1967 is a long time ago. Saturday night, the Leafs will once again attempt to begin a climb out of their drought, playing game seven in their series with the Bruins. To advance to the next round of the playoffs, the Leafs need to win on Boston’s home ice.

I am not on thin ice when I tell you that most people reading these words have no memory of Toronto prevailing against the Bruins in a Stanley Cup playoff series. It hasn’t happened since John Diefenbaker was Canada’s prime minister and Dwight Eisenhower was the president of the United States. The year was 1959.

Most people on this first Winnipeg weekend in May are talking about the weather, speculating on what kind of summer we can look forward to.

The month of May always holds out optimism for the most important season of the year, the one that reminds us that there is a reward in this part of the planet for enduring cold winters, along with springs that frequently feel like winter is an obnoxious house guest who never wants to leave.

We are about to have some sunny days and temperatures approaching 20 degrees. They may help us forget the disappointment that Bill Craig and his fellow Jets fans are feeling.

There was so much promise in the regular season, followed by the nasty, brutal reality of the last days of April.

In the final weeks of the regular season, it seemed the team could do nothing wrong.

We had win after win, an eight-game winning streak. We were the best in the league in keeping the puck out of our net. Connor Hellebuyck will likely be honoured with the Vezina trophy, given every year to the league’s most outstanding goaltender.

How can you wrap up a season, winning eight games in a row, with the league’s best goalie and get routed in the first round of the playoffs, four games to one?

How can you be the best in the league at keeping pucks out of the net during the regular season and then allow an average of five goals per game in the playoffs?

The sad truth is Winnipeg got hit by the Avalanche. If this column wasn’t being written by a homer, I’d devote several hundred words to the team that plays bigger, faster and stronger than ours, a team that is much more at home in post-season play, one that hoisted the Stanley Cup only two years ago. The Colorado Avalanche deserve all the credit in the world for how they performed against the Jets. But fortunately I have only one brief paragraph left in me on this outing. And I will not be a role model of a good sport by devoting it to the team from Denver.

Dear Winnipeg Jets, thank you for a fantastic regular season. Wishing you better luck in the playoffs next year.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster. charles@charlesadler.com