Unpredictable kids require steadying influence of Jets vets

Opinion

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This article was published 28/11/2016 (3232 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s been the injuries. Lots and lots of injuries.

There’s been the schedule. Lots and lots of games.

And there’s been the injuries that have undoubtedly been caused by the schedule — instances where tired players got themselves in situations rested ones would not.

But in addition to all those factors, maybe, just maybe, this wild rollercoaster of ups and downs the Winnipeg Jets are on this season is also just a simple function of who they are right now, which is to say very, very young.

Think about what’s gone on the last couple weeks:

There was that five-game stretch in which the Jets earned nine out of a possible 10 points, followed immediately by a five-game losing streak.

There was that monster 4-0 win over the Chicago Blackhawks, followed just four nights later by a monstrous 4-1 loss to the Boston Bruins.

There was that ugly 5-1 loss to the Nashville Predators on Friday night, followed just 36 hours later by a 3-0 gem against, you guessed it, the same Predators.

They’re 7-4-0 at home, but just 3-8-2 on the road; they’re a very respectable 5-4-1 against the tough Central Division, but a woeful 3-7-1 against the Eastern Conference; they’re unbeatable at 6-0-0 when leading after the second period, but they have trailed after 40 minutes 16 times this year.

All of which is to say the only consistent thing about the Jets through the first quarter of the season has been their inconsistency. And in that, they are behaving exactly like what they are — kids.

Wild mood swings? Tick. Self-destructive behaviours? Tick. Repeating the same mistakes over and over again? Tick.

And then, just when you’re tearing your hair out and starting to wonder whether these youngsters will ever learn, they make some small breakthrough that fills you with pride and demonstrates that, actually, they really were listening all along, just in their own way and at their own pace.

And then rinse and repeat. Welcome to your 2016-17 Winnipeg Jets, hockey fans.

As the weather finally turns to winter in these parts, Jets fans have increasingly been keeping themselves warm at night with the idea that the inevitable return of some key missing players to the Jets lineup — not to mention the return of some sanity to the schedule — is going to get this team on track.

It will certainly help. You only had to watch Drew Stafford score the game-winner Sunday against Nashville to realize the impact a few veterans returning from sick bay can make for a team that most nights is playing on a razor’s edge, where the tiniest details are making the difference between Jets wins and losses.

But even more than some much-needed goal-scoring punch, I’d argue the Jets need veterans like Stafford and Bryan Little back in the lineup to provide the kind of steadying influence that only comes with maturity and which this crazy rollercoaster of a team needs right now to smooth out the bumps.

It’s been fun watching this team soar through the highest of highs — how much fun was that Blackhawks win? — but the problem this season has been those lofty heights have been followed by Death Valley lows.

An 82-game NHL season is a marathon not a sprint and it’s the guys on this team who have been through these long seasons that are needed most right now to trim the tops and the bottoms of this team’s peaks and valleys and replace them with a steady, grinding consistency that looks the same from night to night.

That’s the quality that has been sorely missing from this Jets team for the past month and you notice it not only in play of the youngsters, but also in the handful of veterans who have stayed healthy and have had to take up the slack in recent weeks.

There’s a reason why NHL head coaches don’t normally ask their defencemen to play a half-hour a night and the reason is because it inevitably leads to exactly the kind of defensive breakdowns and costly giveaways that have bubbled to the surface again lately in Dustin Byfuglien’s game.

And there’s also a reason why Blake Wheeler lately looks like he’s aging faster in his new captaincy than Barack Obama did in his presidency. Wheeler’s hair hasn’t turned grey yet, but many nights you can see the weight of the captaincy in the creases on his brow and you cannot help but wonder if that new ‘C’ on his chest is adding dog years to Wheeler right now.

There’s a danger in burning a guy like that out and that seemed to be precisely the message head coach Paul Maurice was trying to send to his team Friday night in Nashville, when Maurice sat Wheeler and a few other veterans for the third period — not because they were playing lousy but because they were carrying the weight of the entire team and others needed to step up.

Now, the imminent return of Little to the lineup should offer some relief to the likes of Wheeler, as will the return of some normalcy in the Jets schedule and just some plain old home cooking.

But make no mistake, this season is going to be an unusually wild ride right to the end. It’s just in this team’s very young DNA right now and is perhaps best illustrated by the state of Patrik Laine at the moment.

A rookie who seemed to put points on the board almost every time he touched the puck through his first month of pro hockey suddenly has just one goal in his last 10 games and cannot seem to buy a break.

So what, the kid forgot how to score? Of course not, anymore than he was reinventing hockey for the first month.

Just like the Jets aren’t as good as that win over Chicago and not as bad as that loss to Boston, Laine’s game is also probably somewhere between the peaks and valleys we’ve seen out of him this season.

And you know what — that works. The Jets don’t need Laine to make it rain hats every time they play at the MTS Centre to be an effective hockey team, any more than they need to shutout Chicago in order to demonstrate they can be competitive every night.

Slow and steady wins the race to the playoffs in the NHL, at which point it’s all about peaking at the right time.

The Jets look more hare than turtle right now. It’s interesting to watch and seldom a dull moment, but this team is in dire need of more grownups in the room or at some point one of these crazy lows is going to get so deep the Jets never get out of it. Your playoff hopes can survive one five-game losing streak a season, but they probably cannot survive two.

There’s nothing like adults to take the fun out of a kid’s game. But in today’s NHL, dull hockey is winning hockey.

email: paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek