Playtime is over

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This article was published 08/02/2021 (1695 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a good thing the Winnipeg Jets took full advantage of their four-day break between games. Because it’s the last time they’ll experience such an extended absence for the remainder of the 2021 NHL season.

In a year where teams are tasked to undergo a condensed 56-game schedule, the Jets won’t have a lot of time to hand out many more days for rest and relaxation, like they did this week. Following Thursday’s 4-1 home victory over the Calgary Flames, players got Friday and Saturday off, before hitting the ice for practice Sunday and Monday — workouts that were among the club’s most spirited this season.

The Jets have just two three-day blocks between games remaining — the first is coming up in the final week of February, with the other occurring in late April — with the rest of the season’s games being played with only one or two days between action. The pressures that come with a condensed season aren’t lost on the players, nor are the days off, which help make a hectic life schedule a bit more bearable.

“Four-day breaks in the NHL are rare, even in a normal season. You see two sometimes and rarely three and not often four. We tried to make the most it, get some rest. Looking ahead at the schedule, it’s pretty intense, especially, it seems, the farther we go in the season we play more and more games,” Jets defenceman Josh Morrissey said. “I think our practices were really calculated with the drills we were doing. There was good reason to them and there’s obviously a lot to like about our game but there’s obviously a lot of things we can improve so early on in the season. I think we tried to make the most of it and we need to be able to ramp it up after coming out of this break, for (Tuesday) night.”

With practice time a rare commodity, the Jets waste little time when they do run full-team workouts. Much work is spent on the power play and penalty kill, as well as on offensive-, neutral- and defensive-zone systems.

The Jets are 7-3-1 through 11 games. Given they’ve won their last two games, the timing for a break might not have seemed ideal.

But as coach Paul Maurice said Monday, they have plenty of practice handling condensed stretches of a season. With COVID-19 making things even tighter, more adjustments are expected and will need to be made on the fly.

Such is life when playing during a global health pandemic and the Jets have already survived some hectic parts of their season.

“A lot of this is new to us, right? We’re going to go about eight weeks with one two-day block. You’ll get a block off during the regular season but your schedule is not overly heavy. We had a bit of a rest coming off six (games) and nine (days) and we absolutely needed that. Like the five (games) in seven (nights) is the toughest you see, so we needed that block,” Maurice said.

“And I think on this one, we just kind of looked at it and said, ‘You know, we’re not going to get an opportunity to rest our team very much.’ So there were a whole bunch of guys that actually did skate on the off day, but that’s on their own. They wanted to touch pucks. It was just an open-ice kind of thing, no-coaches type of idea. But this is also new, right? So all of this now shifts to recovery. We’ll go from now and I think at the end of February, we get a three-day (break) and then we don’t get one until April.”

Maurice said rest and recovery has become the primary focus. While a good part of that falls on the team, it’s also up to the player to take this opportunity to better understand their bodies and what they do and don’t need.

Maurice said that’s already starting to happen with the morning skates. Some players have identified a need to take them in, while others prefer saving their legs for game time.

It’s one of the main reasons the Jets have moved to optional morning skates.

“So we’ll take as much rest in the days that we can. This is an opportunity for these players individually to kind of get to know their own bodies and get to know their own game,” Maurice said. “And I think there can be a big payoff with that.”

Perhaps the one thing Winnipeg still needs to find an answer for is how they regain their jump in games after taking a few days off. Following two breaks this season, of at least three days off between games, the Jets have hit the ice only to suffer defeat. In fact, it was arguably the Jets’ two worst losses – 3-1 at Toronto on Jan. 18; 4-1 at home to Vancouver Jan. 30 – of the 2021 season.

“Obviously when things don’t go well in the way that we prepare, we try to do something different. It’s all individual as well. How hard you’re going to prepare yourself to get back and play as if you just played the other night,” Jets forward Nikolaj Ehlers said.

“We’re professionals. We know that we need to be ready for it. So we are ready, we are going to be ready for that game (Tuesday). There’s no doubt in my mind. It’s just a matter of resting the legs now, get on the plane, have a good night’s sleep and get two points.”

jeff.hamilton@freepress.mb.ca

twitter: @jeffkhamilton