Three burning Winnipeg Jets questions that will define the stretch run

Rick Bowness sees the Winnipeg Jets’ rise from playoff afterthought to Stanley Cup contender as a direct result of a commitment to team defence.

He sees the Jets’ fall from first place in the NHL to third place in their division — with Nashville nipping at their heels at that — as a loss of that same commitment.

“We had that great stretch (of defence) and that’s why we were winning games. We won 26 of those 34 games,” Bowness said before Winnipeg’s loss to Edmonton on Tuesday. “That’s how we’re going to continue winning games: We’re going to have to play defence first. Now it’s hard to get that commitment. Defence is hard work and sacrifice and it’s every night and it’s every shift and it’s hard to get them to play 82 games that way.”

Winnipeg played most of the first period of Tuesday night’s game the right way but fell apart in the second period. On one rush, Connor McDavid outbattled a hustling Kyle Connor, drawing help defence from Mark Scheifele and giving the puck to Warren Foegele in the space Scheifele left behind. Foegele’s pass to Leon Draisaitl created Edmonton’s first goal and, despite the Jets getting beat, it was the goal against that had the most to do with Edmonton’s quality and the least to do with Winnipeg’s lack of focus.

A slow line change by Neal Pionk, Nikolaj Ehlers and Sean Monahan gave Edmonton a three-on-one rush for free leading to Connor Brown’s 2-0 goal. The Jets didn’t register a shot on goal during a four-minute power play, while Edmonton scored 27 seconds into a four-minute power play of their own. Then, after goals by Brenden Dillon and Monahan forced overtime, Connor gifted the puck to Ryan Nugent Hopkins en route to the game-winning goal.

“It was terrible puck management at their blue line and a couple of really bad changes that cost us the goals,” Bowness said. “So that’s self-inflicted. It’s not just one moment, it was too many. That’s creating your own problems.”

Believe it or not, there was a time when the Jets’ five-on-five habits were too good to be derailed in this fashion. Winnipeg’s defensive structure was so consistently excellent, with two defencemen and the first forward back protecting the middle of the ice while the second and third forwards tracked back, too, taking care of the opponents’ attempts to activate their defencemen for a second wave of attack. It was clockwork; it was habitual. It was the stuff of the best five-on-five defence in the entire league — Connor Hellebuyck and Laurent Brossoit’s excellence bolstered by elite chance suppression rates — and it took the Jets to the top of the standings despite injuries to star players.

These Jets have 10 games left in the regular season. What do they need to solve? What are the biggest items standing in their way ahead of the playoffs?

1. Is this 2018, 2019 or a new story altogether?

When Winnipeg was winning, you’d see the stats circulate on social media: This season’s Jets had more points, faster, than Winnipeg did in 2017-18. With visions of Winnipeg’s Western Conference final appearance in mind, the takeaway was simple: these Jets must be better, right? And, since these Jets are better than those Jets were, then it must be reasonable to believe in a deep playoff run. Perhaps even deeper?

Then came the slide. To match 2017-18’s 114-point finish, Winnipeg would need to win all 10 of its remaining games.

#NHLJets currently 11 points ahead of last year’s pace and now 2 points behind the 2017/18 team. In order to match the 17/18 pace the Jets need to win out. Need 20 points in the final 10 games. pic.twitter.com/GCh6Xc6lGY

— Aavco Cup (@AavcoCup) March 27, 2024

“You want to have good habits going into the playoffs,” Bowness said on Tuesday when asked about “flipping a switch” in time for the playoffs. “You want to be playing really well. And we’re not just talking about the outcome of the game. We’re talking about the compete and the process and everything else.”

The last time Jets storylines focused on the idea of flipping a switch, it was in 2019. The Jets had suffered injuries to Ehlers and Dustin Byfuglien, among others, and their second-half collapse led to at least some level of conflict in the dressing room. The team had been so good for so long and it had just been to the Western Conference final. A tide of wishful analysis grew as the playoffs approached: The Jets could put their struggles behind them, play the elite level of hockey they’d played for the first half of the season, and put together another deep run.

I will forever believe that the Jets did elevate their game for the 2019 playoffs. Winnipeg’s pace and structure was better against the Blues than at any point down the stretch, creating periods of dominance during the first five games of Winnipeg’s six-game loss.

Playoff hockey is different, though. St. Louis bent but never broke, staying patient and capitalizing on Winnipeg’s mistakes en route to the second round and, eventually, the Stanley Cup, while never seeming to make massive mistakes of its own. Vegas did the same to Winnipeg last year, playing a more consistently excellent game — the proverbial “full 60 minutes” — without giving chances up for free.

Winnipeg’s rise to the top of the standings this season was characterized by an elite combination of patience and aggression. Its decline has been marked by the same types of momentary lapses that completely undo its stretches of quality.

Can the Jets flip a switch? I sincerely believe that they can, because I’ve seen it happen — and I also don’t think it would be enough if they did. The level of shift-to-shift consistency required for playoff excellence is so high — every forecheck, every backcheck and every puck management decision matters so much — that a sudden spike in effort level won’t be enough to convince me Winnipeg is ready to go deep.

All these years later, I’m still haunted by my conversation with Bryan Little in the moments immediately following the Jets’ 2019 elimination in St. Louis. Winnipeg’s flow of play against St. Louis had been just fine. Its handling of the series’ major moments hadn’t been. Little connected that struggle to the Jets’ stretch run struggles.

“Last year, I felt like we were a more confident group and playing better going into the postseason,” Little said, “Whereas this year, it felt like we were struggling with our team confidence at the end of the year — struggling to get wins. It’s tough going into the playoffs trying to find that.”

My feeling in the visitors’ room in St. Louis that day was that Winnipeg was not surprised that it lost — a stark contrast to the 2018 Jets, who were stunned to be beaten by Vegas. It’s left me sour on the idea of “flipping the switch” ever since. I think habits are a long-term thing and that Winnipeg’s struggling with those habits now.

“The consistency is the hardest thing for us to get. Defence is hard work,” Bowness said on Tuesday. “There’s no shortcuts. Structure is hard work and getting ready to do it every night. That’s the hard part: getting mentally ready to do it every night.”

2. Does Bowness have his deployment right?

Bowness’ accomplishments in Winnipeg are many. He instantly understood that the team’s leadership group needed to change. He spent his first full summer getting to know his players and their visions for success, generating buy-in for a new direction of Jets hockey. He changed Winnipeg’s defensive structure, putting greater emphasis on zone defence between the dots in the defensive zone, and the Jets gave up fewer goals in his first season than before his arrival before making an even bigger improvement this season. In short: Winnipeg has gotten better at the exact things Bowness was meant to improve.

There are still reasons to believe Bowness is leaving quality on the table.

You’re sick of reading this by now but the Jets outscore teams like Stanley Cup contenders do when Ehlers and Scheifele play together. They don’t when they don’t.

That remains true even when Ehlers gives the puck away or takes surprising routes or misses the net altogether on his breakaways — such is the sheer volume of chances he and Scheifele create together. The other top quality left winger — the one Winnipeg plays with Scheifele no matter who gives which pucks away — has been outscored 6-1 at five-on-five during Winnipeg’s four-game losing streak. Ehlers is up 3-2 in that same time frame, with fewer giveaways that lead to goals against.

That stat isn’t meant to turn this into a Kyle Connor hit piece. No Jets skater is more dangerous between the top of the circles and the net than Connor is. No Jets player has scored more goals, including at five-on-five, where Connor’s 19 lead Ehlers’ 16 despite playing 78 fewer minutes. But Ehlers is plus-27 at five-on-five, while Connor is even. He’s giving back too much right now, giving the puck away on breakouts, and lately it’s leading to more goals against than Connor is creating at the other end of the ice.

It’s one of a few head-scratching deployment decisions. Mason Appleton routinely plays the third most even strength minutes among Jets forwards, for example, trailing only Scheifele and Connor. Pionk struggled badly over the weekend but got the right combination of special teams minutes to lead all Jets in ice time against Edmonton.

Bowness has stated that he knows what problems ail the Jets right now. I have no doubt that he’s working to address those problems behind the scenes. His most obvious accountability tool — ice time — seems to be his second priority. Past decisions convey that Winnipeg will go forward with Scheifele and Connor on line one, regardless of who scores how many goals into which net. His overall impact in Winnipeg has been a large positive — I’ll restate this in hopes that it balances out the complaints — but Bowness appears to be leaving results on the table by believing his players will change before he does.

3. Who will lead the way, effort-wise?

This section is meant to appreciate Adam Lowry and Brenden Dillon. Both have thrown their weight around, neither has cheated for offence and when the Jets need a physical answer you see Lowry laying the body or Dillon putting Corey Perry into Winnipeg’s bench. They’re not the only players whose 200-foot commitment never seems to wane but, at times like this, I think players need to see each other laying everything on the line. To watch Dillon in the scrum following Winnipeg’s loss to Edmonton, scanning his face for the series of fresh bruises after his fight with Darnell Nurse, was to believe the Jets are still in the fight, effort-wise.

It was positive to hear Bowness say the intensity and effort was there against Edmonton after calling both of those items into question earlier in the day.

“You can talk about details and structures and all of this process, you can talk all you want, but if the other team is out there just a little bit hungrier than you are, then that stuff goes away,” Bowness said. “So it’s important now that we get that intensity back up and that we’re not outworked and we’re not outcompeted, then everything else will take care of itself.”

That’s the hope then — that Winnipeg can compete its way out of this slide. If defence and structure really are about effort, as Bowness said and I too believe, then I understand Winnipeg’s desire to get back to elite defensive play by focusing on intangibles like effort, determination and will to win.

Winnipeg’s loss against Edmonton was a step up in quality of play from its loss to Washington, which itself was a step up from its Saturday dismantling by the Islanders. Bowness was pleased by the improvement in effort, although Winnipeg’s self-inflicted wounds now point to matters of execution.

Teams win as teams. Everyone on the roster will have a piece of the Jets’ success if they can turn things around. For now, I’m looking for Lowry and Dillon to lead the way, for Hellebuyck and Brossoit to steal another game or two, for Josh Morrissey to make another one of the momentum-turning plays he’s become known for and for the Jets’ star players to manage the puck well enough so that they don’t give back 100 percent of the greatness they create.

(Photo of Rick Bowness: James Carey Lauder / USA Today)