WINNIPEG—The Jets fan waiting on Portage Avenue two hours before game time was matter-of-fact in his calculations.
“Best thing is the fourth win would be in their rink,” he chirped.
Yes, true enough. With his Jets facing an 0-3 deficit going into Game 4 on Wednesday, four consecutive wins were necessary to advance to the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, with the fourth having to be captured at the Honda Centre in Anaheim, home of the Ducks.
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The unwavering optimism was compelling. The Jets themselves had summoned first-rounder Nik Ehlers from the QMJHL’s Halifax Mooseheads earlier in the day, as though silently calculating they’d need all the bodies they could get when the series, as it undoubtedly would, as it must because this was all too good to end, stretched into the weekend.
Just as the Jets and Ducks were taking to the ice, Ottawa was finishing off a 1-0 victory at home over Montreal to stay alive after, like the Jets, losing the first three games of the series. It was as though one Canadian team was setting the example for another. “See, do it like this.”
Inside the MTS Centre, the crowd at game time was just a shade less noisy, less subdued than spent by the frustrating results 48 hours earlier and the bleak scenario. The lungs seemed willing, but the spirit was flagging, and the emotion of the first playoff game on Winnipeg ice in 19 years earlier in the week was no longer fuel for the fans. Similarly, the players were so battered by the sheer effort it took to get to the post-season they seemed to have nothing more to give.
And so it was, in this mixture of hope and acceptance, of never-say-die fandom and a keen understanding that what was required of this team was too much to ask, that the Jets season ended with a definitive 5-2 loss to Anaheim. These last two games were needed to close the circle on Winnipeg’s lost-and-found NHL story, and within that context, getting swept by the Ducks probably won’t sting quite as much.
But that’s for the locals to decide.
“I do believe they appreciate the effort,” said Jets head coach Paul Maurice. “We’ll try to make things better next year beyond the effort.”
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Winnipeg has proven something, the Jets have proven something, and now a promising future beckons. But the Ducks also showed that Winnipeg isn’t close yet, that more building needs to be done by GM Kevin Cheveldayoff and his crew before the Jets can truly be viewed as a contender in the Western Conference.
That’s okay. When the defunct Atlanta Thrashers landed on the shores of the Assiniboine four years ago, they had some talented players, but not many, and it wasn’t much of a team. Today, even having dispatched former franchise forward Evander Kane to Buffalo, they have pretty good depth and a vibrant team personality.
It takes that long just to get here, to this level of competitiveness, unless you land a Connor McDavid along the way to accelerate the process, which the Jets never have. And it will take a bit longer, at least, to make this Winnipeg team into a squad capable of making a Stanley Cup final, although Calgary may yet demonstrate this spring the distance travelled from also-ran to the penthouse isn’t nearly as far as some assume it is.
“Anaheim was better than we were in this series,” said Maurice. “We’ve got a lot of room to improve. But before you can get to any of that, you’ve got to accomplish what was accomplished this year.”
Once again Wednesday night, the Jets were quick off the mark in Game 4 with the first goal of the game late in the first period, and once again, the Ducks erased it after 93 measly seconds.
“The difference in this series was the way we responded every time they scored a goal,” said Anaheim coach Bruce Boudreau afterwards. “But I never thought in my wildest dreams we’d win four straight.”
Bryan Little, who seemed to have the game winner to his credit in Game 3 before Ryan Kesler put his stamp on the game and sent it into overtime, opened the scoring during a Winnipeg power play with Andrew Cogliano off for tripping.
Dustin Byfuglien rumbled up the middle of the ice and made a hard, tape-to-tape pass to Mathieu Perreault on his left. Perreault skated halfway into the Anaheim zone before snapping a hard, accurate pass of his own to Little cutting through a seam in the Ducks defence.
Little pumped once, then sniped his second goal in two games over the glove of Frederik Andersen to give Winnipeg a 1-0 lead.
That didn’t last long. Emerson Etem made it so.
Etem is a California-born, 2010 first-rounder out of the Medicine Hat Tigers who has struggled to get to the NHL and stay there. A 61-goal man in junior, he had five in 45 regular season games and none in the post-season until he went off on a solo dash down the left wing.
Jacob Trouba has been very good all year for the Jets, but the young defenceman was fooled on a outside-inside move by Etem, who partially lost his balance as he eluded Trouba. With Ben Chiarot coming across hard with a sliding defensive effort, Etem’s options were limited, but the one he picked – an unorthodox backhand flick to the top corner – was perfect, and tied the game 1-1.
The second was largely uneventful, with the two sides preferring not to repeat the withering physical crashes and booms of two nights earlier, and with whistles and stoppages ruining the floor. The Ducks assumed greater and greater control as the period wore on, and Cogliano gave them a 2-1 lead going into the third, something they’d not enjoyed in the first three games of the series.
The Jets had just finished a disappointing power play with no shots. Then Byfuglien – supported by chants of “Stick Together” from the crowd in reference to his peculiar media performance on the off-day – made one of those rash decisions he makes now and then, which must make Maurice insane at times and makes you wonder that despite that size and skill, if there’s a ceiling on Byfuglien’s game.
On this play, clever Corey Perry cruised into the high slot of the Winnipeg zone with the puck and Byfuglien decided to charge at him like a bull at a matador. “Ole,” Perry must have muttered under his breath, as he nimbly stepped around Byfuglien, and then made a perfect pass to Cogliano on his right.
The puck had barely arrived before it was gone, deposited behind Ondrej Pavelec at 12:55. Even the Prime Minister, seated a dozen rows behind the player benches wearing a white Team Canada jersey right into the third period, had to be impressed.
The crowd desperately wanted to roar, it seemed, and did when Byfuglien deposited Tomas Fleischmann head-first into the Winnipeg bench. But otherwise there was more tension than exuberance on this night, tension that this season might soon be over.
A half-hearted rendition of “Captain Rogaine” aimed at Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf was produced, but shortly thereafter Kesler, the former Manitoba Moose, gave Anaheim a 3-1 lead. The crowd got one last blast of energy and hope at 10:27 when a Mark Stuart point shot glanced off Ducks defender Cam Fowler and into the Anaheim net, Winnipeg’s first third period goal of the series.
With five minutes left, Perreault had a glorious chance but couldn’t drain it, and then the Ducks went right down the ice and scored. Kesler again. Then an empty netter.
Sigh. Over. The Ducks outscored Winnipeg 9-1 in third periods in the series and padded their total of third period comeback wins this season to 21, a strong measure of the difference between the two teams.
“We’re disappointed that we didn’t even get one win,” said winger Blake Wheeler, one of many hobbled Jets players. “But the way the organization looked in September and October, we’re going in the right direction.”
Anaheim, with big name stars in Getzlaf and Perry and lots of playoff experience, also demonstrated in this series its supporting cast that includes Jakob Silfverberg, Cogliano and Hampus Lindholm, is a pretty dependable group. They’ll be favoured to make it to the Western Conference final, which would be a good way for Boudreau to kill the whispers that he can’t get a team very far in the second season.
“They’re playing with a lot of confidence right now,” said Wheeler.
This series, from beginning to end, was always more about Winnipeg than Anaheim, at least here in the Great White North. People were talking about historic Game 3 before Game 1 was played. The romantic story of the Jets and their attachment to the Manitoba capital grabbed at people from across the nation, and made disgruntled supporters in Edmonton and Toronto mutter that if only they could have a team like the Jets to cheer for, their lives would be better, happier.
“We’ve set a standard,” said Jets captain Andrew Ladd. “Now it’s up to us to keep that standard.”
Now that it’s over, however, it’s no longer about the Jets but about the Ducks, champions of the NHL eight years ago, and a dangerous club again this spring. That’s how it works. You lose and you’re gone, from both the competition and the narrative.
