BILLECK: Jets wilting when they should be winning

The Winnipeg Jets should have looked like the Nashville Predators on Wednesday.

Article content

With a month to go in the regular season, some 17 games for the local hockey team, the Jets instead got their own game fed to them on a platter fit for some Tennessee BBQ.

Article content

It’s the opposite direction this team should be going.

Nashville — give that team credit they’ve finally come around on head coach Andrew Brunette’s system and it’s paying off — shouldn’t be walking Winnipeg like they did in their 4-2 win over them.

That’s a flattering score for the unflattering hockey the Jets played.

The Preds were everything the Jets can be but haven’t been of late, especially against top opponents — playoff teams, like the ones they will have to beat if they’re going to make any noise in the postseason.

Relentless on the forecheck, tenacious on the backcheck, great in transition and stuffy in the neutral zone.

Article content

Article content

Those are all descriptors of Winnipeg’s game through the first 44 games this season. The past 21 have been a mish-mash of inconsistent offerings.

Some nights, they look like world-beaters who could put up a touchdown on the scoreboard without so much as a flick of the wrist.

And then there are nights like Wednesday where they no-show a game against a team, and more importantly, a style of play they’ll see come mid-April.

Sure, on Monday they beat up a porous Washington team that sits below the playoff line. But two days earlier they got their posteriors handed to them by a division-leading Vancouver Canucks squad that led head coach Rick Bowness to declare the game the worst he’s seen in his two years here.

A night earlier they shut out the Seattle Kraken. A few nights before that, they lost to that same Kraken team.

Article content

Inconsistency isn’t what you’d want to see from this team right now. This is the time for fine-tuning and working their new faces into the lineup, not looking for the game they lost weeks ago.

And not coming off last season where a regular-season-ending slide concluded with a hasty exit from the playoffs.

Wednesday felt like one of those games from a year ago.

They tried to force it when it wasn’t there, as Dylan DeMelo said after the game.

“Tonight, our process wasn’t really good,” he went on to say. “We looked a little slow at times out there.”

An off night was fine in December when they were few and far between.

But since the Jets surrendered four goals to the Boston Bruins on Jan. 22, when their streak of allowing three or fewer ended at 34 games, the team is 11-9-1.

Article content

That’s as-near-as-makes-no-difference .500 hockey.

This team has done just fine picking on the little guys. But when the big boys enter the chat, they’ve often wilted in their presence.

And therein lies the problem: there are no little guys when the puck drops for the post-season dance.

The Jets have 17 games left to learn to puff their chests out again.

• Mark Scheifele’s absence from Thursday’s loss due to a flu bug that’s lingered inside the dressing room over the past three weeks was quite impactful, even if he was nowhere near Canada Life Centre.

• Bowness’s initial plan with his top two lines sans Scheifele lasted 20 minutes. The team played worse in the second period after flipping Nikolaj Ehlers and Alex Iafallo. You don’t expect it to be perfect, but with a team as deep as the Jets are thought to be, you also don’t expect the dropoff to be so visible.

Article content

• The Connor Hellebuyck naysayers poked their heads above ground after the first two Nashville goals. It’s a curious thing, that. The goalie that’s pulled this team kicking and screaming into the playoffs for so many years, and yet some are waiting with pitchforks in hand to impale the guy when his play dips. He’s lost four of his past six starts, and there are a couple of goals in there that would be considered “softies. But Thursday wasn’t that night. Gustav Nyquist’s opener was a perfect shot that went bar down. And Kiefer Sherwood’s 2-0 goal came as Jets newcomer Colin Miller laid a perfect screen.

• Here’s Bowness on Hellebuyck: “He was the least of our concerns (on Wednesday). He kept it close. He kept us in the game and gave us a chance.”

• Mason Appleton had a terrific game. Nearly scored in the first, and then again on a wraparound in the second that made Juuse Saros produce a tremendous save. He finally hit pay dirt with 11 seconds left in the game on the power play. It was a deserved reward for one of the few who came out to play.

[email protected]

X: @scottbilleck

Article content