Hungry predators hunting Jets

Opinion

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This article was published 21/03/2021 (1635 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Maybe it was captain Blake Wheeler smashing his stick, then picking up the puck and pitching it into the empty stands at Rogers Place late Saturday night. Perhaps it was the post-game Zoom interviews, which had a certain edge to them after a second straight loss in Edmonton to start a seven-game road trip, this one courtesy of a blown lead.

Whatever the case, the Winnipeg Jets are starting to look, sound and act like a hockey team that is hearing footsteps.

Take a peek over the shoulder and Paul Maurice’s club will see both Vancouver and Calgary getting a little too close for comfort thanks to recent hot streaks that have them surging up the Canadian division standings. The fifth-place Canucks are 7-1-1 in their past nine and just three points behind the third-place Jets. The sixth-place Flames are 5-3-1 in their past nine and within five points of Winnipeg.

Pitter, patter.

Which makes this week the biggest of the season so far. Winnipeg will play two straight against Vancouver starting Monday night. Then it’s on to Calgary for three games in four days starting Friday. Some positive results in enemy territory would go a long way to restoring a bit of breathing room.

“We’ve got to buckle down. We’ve got to use this as motivation. Not a knife in our back, you know? We’ve got to get back on the horse and continue to drive and believe in ourselves and know that we are a good team and there are good things ahead of us,” Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck said Saturday after an early 2-0 advantage ended in a 4-2 loss to the Oilers.

I saw and heard more frustration over that result then at any point this year, both in what happened on the ice at the final buzzer — Wheeler was given a misconduct for his chuck-a-puck antics — and in the soundbites coming out of the room. I won’t call it panic. It’s still too early for that, and the Jets are still in a decent spot. But there’s definitely an added sense of urgency to the situation, now that we’re into the second-half of this truncated regular-season.

“We’ve had bits and pieces of adversity but this is probably one of the bigger ones. We’ve been lucky enough to stay healthy. I won’t say our backs are up against the wall, but it’s definitely time for us to go on a little bit of a run, I guess. It seems like, maybe result-wise, we haven’t got it as good as we did maybe since the Toronto series. We’ve just got to get back to our winning ways,” said forward Andrew Copp.

To be fair to the Jets, their recent schedule hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park. They just played nine straight games against Toronto, Edmonton and Montreal, which are the other three clubs currently in a playoff spot. Seven of those nine were on the road. Winnipeg went 4-4-1, although they are just 1-3-0 since going 2-0-1 against the Maple Leafs.

“We’re not bragging, but we’re not dejected,” Maurice said of the tough stretch.

It’s not just the Jets that are being pursued by the hard-charging Canucks and Flames. Edmonton and Toronto are tied for first but just four points up on Winnipeg, which is a single point ahead of fourth-place Montreal. What looked a couple weeks ago to be some clear separations between the contenders and the pretenders is now a logjam, with six squads basically fighting for the four post-season spots, and exactly seven weeks left in the season.

Nobody should be sleeping too comfortably right now, other than the last-place Ottawa Senators who are very early in their rebuild.

“Coming into the season we knew it was going to be really tight. At no point did we expect to be in cruise control with a month left in the season. I think everyone came into this, probably in all divisions expecting to have to earn a playoff spot up to the last few games of the season,” said Wheeler.

“The quality of play has been high in our division, there are no nights off, everybody is playing hard and coming into the second half of the seasons it’s just going to get much tighter. There is going to be some exciting hockey coming down the stretch.”

One of the unique aspects of this season is the all-divisional format, which potentially makes it easier to gain ground. All 56-games are so-called “four pointers” this year.

“It’s more of a sprint to the finish here,” said defenceman Dylan DeMelo. “All of those games mean that much more. You string a few wins together, you can get right back in it. A few losses, maybe teams creep up on you a little bit. That’s the nature of this season. You need to keep an eye but you just got to worry about your team, obviously. Hopefully, if you can string a few wins together, you can keep climbing or create some separation for yourself.”

The Jets had been doing extremely well in that department, going 10-0-1 following a loss this year prior to Saturday’s blemish in Edmonton. Now we’ll see what they can do, for the first time, coming off two straight regulation setbacks.

“I don’t believe there’s any panic. There’s a lot of belief in our room,” said Copp. “We just move on to Vancouver, and don’t let it get to three.”

Easier said than done, especially against a Vancouver team that must feel like it’s found a second life. They appeared to be dead in the water just a couple weeks ago. But some much-needed results appear to have done the trick after they had the busiest schedule of any NHL team to start the season.

“You kind of knew, their schedule was so heavily weighted — everyone has three or four games on them now — and there was a cost to them for that. Other team’s schedules, all of us were lighter on the front, and we kind of took advantage of that,” said Maurice.

“It goes to that whole playoff mentality. You can’t carry a loss with you and you have to get back. Being able to be consistent, understand how you’re playing, and being able to be consistent with your emotions — find that place where you can get that energy, is the key piece. It’s a playoff series where you really have to rely on yourselves for your own emotion, being able to control them, and be even keel is critical now.”

Thing is, the Jets didn’t look very even-keel after Saturday’s meltdown, especially their captain. Although Wheeler had calmed down a bit by the time he faced our questions a few minutes later.

“We have a very mature team, very mature coaching staff. We’ll handle this like adults…and get ourselves right for a big series against Vancouver,” he said.

You’d prefer to be the pursued, rather than the pursuer, so Winnipeg is still sitting pretty in that department. But if a tough couple nights at the office bleeds into a bad week, those footsteps the Jets are hearing could quickly become a full-blown stampede.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg