Jets enter March like lambs

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This article was published 28/02/2016 (3562 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are no excuses.

Sure, the season-ending injury to Bryan Little didn’t help. And the trade rumours that swirled around Andrew Ladd all this month created a distraction, no matter how much everyone in the Winnipeg Jets dressing room insisted it hadn’t.

But at the end of the day, February was a month of put up or shut up for the Jets and they will now head into March quiet as a church mouse, with 21 games still to play but not a whole lot to actually play for.

Whatever slim hopes the Jets had of making a playoff push basically evaporated with a 4-7-1 record in February that has them tied for 12th in the Western Conference and a full 12 points out of the final wild-card spot heading into today’s NHL trading deadline.

While there are no excuses, there are some factors that at least partly explain how it all went so wrong for the Jets this month.

Topping that list is a hellish schedule that saw the Jets play 12 games in nine different arenas and travel a total of 17,700 kilometres in the shortest month on the calendar.

(To put that number in perspective, it is 9,499 kilometres from Winnipeg to Beijing, 11,714 km from Winnipeg to the southernmost tip of South America and 150 million kms from Winnipeg to the sun.

It is probably not a coincidence the only worse monthly record the Jets posted this season came in November, when they were 4-9-1 while playing in 10 different arenas.

Jets head coach Paul Maurice — who’s not one to take the easy excuse — made it clear his team’s schedule did them no favours in February.

“It will be good to get back home — it’s our 12th game in (nine) different cities and seven different time-zone changes. We could use a little rest, I think.”

Were there any lessons to be drawn about his team from their struggles this month, Maurice was asked. “It was a great learning experience,” he grimaced. “And I think we’re going to get the opportunity to do it again.”

Indeed, with what is now the second-youngest team in the NHL, Maurice and company will undoubtedly learn many more lessons the hard way. And those hard lessons will pick up in March right where they left off in February with yet another challenging schedule, but for different reasons.

The Jets play 11 games at home in March, beginning with a five-game homestand that opens Tuesday when the Florida Panthers visit. But the Jets also play five games on the road in March.

Add it up and the Jets play 16 games in a 30-day span, perfectly spaced two days apart through the entire month with the exception of one back-to-back set thrown in for good measure.

The games, says Jets defenceman Jacob Trouba, don’t change no matter how many you play. But the practise and preparation in a schedule like Winnipeg has in March is a very different matter.

“You have to manage yourself a lot better on those days in between,” said Trouba.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek