Attitude adjustment pays off for Jets

Opinion

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This article was published 20/05/2021 (1574 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Yogi Berra once described the sport of baseball as “90 per cent mental. The other half is physical.” And as the Winnipeg Jets stumbled down the stretch — dropping seven straight games at one point and nine of their final dozen — I began to wonder if those words were ringing true.

The body may have been willing, but the mind had become quite weak.

Forget about debating whether their glass was half-full or half-empty. Outside of perhaps their own room, you’d be hard-pressed to find a drop of positivity about their chances heading into a first-round playoff series against the Edmonton Oilers. Not only did the Jets lose seven of nine head-to-head meetings this season, they weren’t going to have key forwards Nikolaj Ehlers and Pierre-Luc Dubois in the Game 1 lineup due to injuries.

A funny thing happened on the way to this seemingly fragile group falling apart completely. They strengthened their collective resolve, used adversity as motivation, got their backs up and drew first blood in their best-of-seven playoff series in Wednesday’s impressive 4-1 victory.

Sure, X’s and O’s and systems and mechanics and puck luck and all the other metrics are factors, but as Berra famously explained, it’s often about attitude, and these resilient Jets found a way to quickly fine-tune theirs, getting back on the same page and blocking out all the noise despite injuries to some key players.

Coach Paul Maurice put it this way: “I think the room got to one brain, kind of accepted the fact that we all have to play the exact same game regardless of what line you’re on and we all have to play the same way, regardless of our skill level. It was a really important step for us and I think we got to that.”

An obvious caveat here: This series is a long way from over, and one win is just that. The Jets will need to find a way to get three more against a favoured Oilers squad that I expect will come out with a renewed sense of purpose when the puck drops for Game 2 tonight at Rogers Place.

And no, I’m not going to apologize for picking Edmonton to win this series (in five games, no less!), as a handful of folks in my email inbox suggested I do on Thursday, but I will tip my cap to the Jets for executing a solid game plan to near perfection for at least one night, keeping Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl completely in check and getting big contributions from some of their depth players and the usual stellar netminding from the reigning Vezina Trophy winner.

Is it possible that what didn’t kill the Jets has actually made them stronger?

“I really felt that the struggles that we went through were very necessary for us to get to a different place. We had to get ourselves to a playoff mindset. So that’s kind of the one brain,” Maurice said Thursday following his team’s optional practice.

“Playoff hockey is just different. And the more playoff games your team, your organization goes through, the better you understand that. That losing streak gave us an opportunity to focus as a group and become more of a playoff style team.”

Now the trick is to do it again, and again, and again. But the early returns are promising. I think we sometimes forget that this Jets core, despite still being relatively young, is already long on experience when it comes to playing meaningful hockey. Much more so than their opponents, in fact. Which is no small thing this time of year.

Along with the injured Ehlers, Connor Hellebuyck, Mark Scheifele, Kyle Connor, Adam Lowry, Andrew Copp, Josh Morrissey and Tucker Poolman are all drafted and developed players who were part of the 2017-18 run to the Western Conference final, the 2018-19 late-season swoon that ended with a first-round elimination to St. Louis, and the up-and-down COVID-19 campaign of 2019-20 which came to a screeching halt in the bubble last summer.

Older skaters including Blake Wheeler, Mathieu Perreault and, in 2018, Paul Stastny have been along for the ride as well. That’s a lot of lessons learned along the way, both good and bad. When the going got tough, there were plenty of calming influences to be found. Stastny, for example, called out his team publicly following a dreadful 6-1 loss to the Oilers on April 26 that represented the low point in the season, suggesting they were guilty of “cheating” how they were playing.

“I think I was just kind of blunt about what everyone else was thinking. Sometimes it just had to be said,” Stastny explained Thursday. “Whether it was internal meetings or coaches meetings about it. More than anything, we are holding each other more accountable on the bench.”

Despite what the on-ice product looked like at times, Stastny insisted there was no panic. But there was an important realization that the status quo wouldn’t suffice as the spotlight got brighter.

“Whether you’re a top guy or you’re playing on the bottom line, it doesn’t matter; you’re part of the team. It makes you feel important and helps you build your confidence. We’ve done a good job of staying together going through the tough stretch we went through,” he said. “We’re a good group of guys who want to do whatever it takes to win. We don’t care if the top line is scoring all the goals or if our backup goalie is winning the games. We’re all in it together and we can really see it all inside the locker room.”

That was certainly the case in Game 1, when Poolman and Dominic Toninato scored the first two goals, rookie Logan Stanley had a huge night including an assist and team-high eight hits, and journeyman fourth-line centre Nate Thompson had two helpers.

Speaking with us on Thursday from Edmonton, the well-travelled Thompson said Stastny’s public words packed plenty of punch and gave everyone a much-needed wake-up call going into the playoffs.

“Whenever Paul speaks, he holds a lot of weight. He’s been around a long time. When you have a guy like that speak up and talk about how we need to play, I think everyone’s going to listen to him,” said Thompson. “I think our game kind of transformed after that.”

Indeed, a Jets team that many — including yours truly — were writing off for dead before the series started now has a pulse. Which brings to mind another famous quip from Berra, the legendary New York Yankees slugger: “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg