Honeymoon looking more like seven-year itch

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/10/2017 (2918 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On a day the Winnipeg Jets announced the second-richest sports signing in Manitoba history (US$42 million for Nikolaj Ehlers) and began play in the most anticipated season in these parts I can remember, it was the 15,321 spectators who packed Bell MTS Place Wednesday night who reminded us all, once again, that it is the fans, not the players, who remain the greatest single asset of this NHL team.

A honeymoon with this city that began back in 2011 the day Mark Chipman announced the NHL was coming back to Winnipeg is still going hot and heavy six years later.

There’s been squabbles and spats along the way, for sure. We’ve disappointed each other more than once. And there’s been more than a few nights that we’ve gone to bed mad at each other.

But seven seasons in, this thing still looks and feels on a nightly basis like the day these two first met.

It’s not just that the downtown barn was sold out Wednesday night.

Of course it was — it was opening night of the 2017-18 NHL season and this is Canada.

Throw in an opponent in the Toronto Maple Leafs that always attracts a disturbing number of Leafs jerseys in the crowd and there was no price too high to pay to be in the house Wednesday night.

And the prices were high, all right.

All regular-season games are not created equal in today’s NHL and the Jets price games in four different categories.

Want to see the Columbus Blue Jackets on a Tuesday night in October? That’s a ‘C’ game and you can get in the door for as little as $59.25 if you can find a ticket.

But that same cheap seat on Wednesday night would have set you back $77.50 for what the Jets categorize as an ‘A+’ game.

The top price Wednesday night? A cool $257.50.

Sadly, the only thing ‘A+’ about this home opener was the opponent, as every Jets fan’s best hopes and worst fears were realized in a first period.

Winnipeg shelled the Leafs with 17 shots (best hopes) and yet head to the dressing room down 3-0 thanks to — stop me if this sounds familiar — shaky goaltending and undisciplined play in their own end (worst fears).

It was a microcosm, in the first 20 minutes of an 82-game schedule, of all that ailed the Jets last season. And the season before that.

And it speaks volumes that the man who was supposed to be the solution to all of Winnipeg’s goaltending problems — Steve Mason — got pulled in his first regular-season Jets game after having given up five goals on 20 shots.

The final score — 7-2 Toronto — was the stuff of Jets nightmares. Billionaire part-owner David Thomson, who took in the game from Chipman’s box, had a private jet and his money to keep him warm on the way home to Toronto Wednesday night.

The rest of us spent the night in a cold shiver.

Now, I suppose this is the point in this column where I am supposed to say something about how ‘it’s still early’ and ‘it’s a long season.’

All of which is true, of course. But here’s something that is equally true — the Jets have a nightmarish October schedule, with 11 games, nine against playoff teams from last year, including a pair against the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins.

This thing, in other words, has the potential to go sideways very quickly if the Jets don’t get right in a hurry. And it’s not like it would be the first time Winnipeg let a season slip away early on. The Jets had a losing record coming out of November in each of the last two seasons and both times spent the rest of the year trying and failing to recover lost ground.

That gets us back to where we started this journey — with the fans in this town who have, until this point, stuck with this team through thick (occasionally) and thin (mostly).

Because you have to wonder, with expectations running at a fever pitch right now, whether this long-simmering honeymoon is finally coming to an end as fans demand a team with whom they have been so patient — and so supportive — finally starts providing a return on their investment.

It is a monument to the loyalty of this community that we’re still all-in, and Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff basically admitted as much during an interview with TSN this summer.

“It’s a passionate market and they really understand the game. And that’s been really important in the process that we’ve gone through and we’ve had to do. I think maybe a less educated market might not have understood how you go about acquiring a Laine, an Ehlers…”

I’m not sure whether it’s hockey intellect or just blind faith that allowed the Jets to give contract extensions this summer to Cheveldayoff and head coach Paul Maurice, neither of whom have ever won a playoff game in this town.

But either way, Chevy is right — there are definitely some hockey markets around the league that would have met that kind of front office hubris with something much more than the collective shrug it was greeted with here locally.

For reasons good and bad, this market continues to believe in this team.

Consider: according to ticket reseller Vivid Seats, the secondary market right now for Jets tickets — people selling their tickets on the open market — is the seventh-most expensive in the NHL, with the average Jets ticket selling for US$176.

It says a lot about the loyalty of this city’s hockey fans — and their huge expectations for the Jets this season — that the only tickets more expensive on the secondary market than Winnipeg’s all belong to teams who made the playoffs last season.

Only in Winnipeg, in other words, are people tripping over themselves to pay more than face value for a ticket to see a team that has missed the playoffs in five of their first six seasons and just got shelled in the season opener.

Jets captain Blake Wheeler said last month that “it has to be this year” for the team to finally take the next step.

He’s right, in more ways than one.

Honeymoon? It’s looking more and more like a seven-year itch and there was a run on calamine lotion late Wednesday night.

email: paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @PaulWiecek