Jets starting to believe in Jets

Posted: 1:00 AM CST Friday, Mar. 1, 2013

There was lots to hate about the Winnipeg Jets and their game Thursday night. Too bad. Save that speech for another night. The Jets needed two points on Thursday night and they got them. End of story.

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/03/2013 (4576 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After all the gaffes and miscues, the result is what counted and this 3-1 upending of the New Jersey Devils was a win regardless of how clumsy.

The Jets almost certainly would have lost this game last season. Instead, they rode a two-goal effort from captain Andrew Ladd and pushed themselves over the line into eighth place in the Eastern Conference.

John Woods / The Canadian Press
Winnipeg Jets goaltender Ondrej Pavelec saves the shot from New Jersey Devils' Bobby Butler during the first-period. — John Woods / The Canadian Press Winnipeg Jets goaltender Ondrej Pavelec saves the shot from New Jersey Devils' Bobby Butler during the first-period.

Teaching

Claude Noel can use this dog as a teaching tool and remind his team how poor they were as they prepare for Saturday’s all-important divisional matchup with the Washington Capitals. He can sneer at his team and rant and rave. And then he can turn his back on them and gleefully skip down the hall to his office with two points jammed deep into his pocket.

Points in the bank are what every team in the NHL is scrambling to accrue right now and for a team on the rise like the Jets, winning with a losing effort is a new step in their development.

The Jets are certainly not good enough to try this very often but there is a secondary victory in the realization they used a sub-par effort to beat a team that advanced to the Stanley Cup final last spring.

One might argue the Jets have no business beating the New Jersey Devils on their best nights, let alone on their worst.

Script

But that would be reading off an old script, as there has been a change in Winnipeg. The Jets are better than they were a year ago, better than they were a month ago and even better than they were a week ago.

No amount of spinning or theorizing can change that the Jets are now 10-9-1 and officially in a playoff position.

Getting a door slammed in your face is part of life. The defeats can become self-defeating.

Or they can forge a resolve that one day morphs into confidence and all of a sudden those losses become wins.

Winnipeg is witnessing this very transformation on a nightly basis.

The NHL’s 48-game schedule will hide some warts and reward some teams that in a longer season would be exposed as somewhat fraudulent. Maybe that’s the Jets and maybe it isn’t.

No matter. What matters is the Jets don’t believe it. They believe they belong. And right now they do.

gary.lawless@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @garylawless