Jets' Schmidt finds little consolation in 'there's always next year'

WINNIPEG — Brenden Dillon got his first and only taste of the Stanley Cup final in 2016 as a member of the San Jose Sharks, finishing with 14 of the 16 victories required to get your name etched on the silver chalice.

Nate Schmidt made it within three wins in 2018 as a member of the inaugural Vegas Golden Knights team that ultimately came up short against his former squad, the Washington Capitals.

Both veteran defencemen have combined to be part of four trades since that time, so they’ve been around teams that built their way up for a run and have been through more than a fair share of disappointment since, and are now left trying to pick up the pieces after this lost season for the Winnipeg Jets.

Being involved in a string of garbage-time games to close out the regular season wasn’t what either Schmidt or Dillon envisioned when they were acquired on consecutive days from the Vancouver Canucks and Washington Capitals to help bolster the Jets’ defence corps this past summer.

The topic of this disappointment has been a common one during those regular drives to the rink together and the contests of those passionate discussions would have the makings for an entertaining podcast, but neither player really held back in this more public display at the podium.

“It’s something that we have, ad nauseam, tried to figure out what we can do, what we can as a group. For me personally. I’ve been doing it, and it’s going to continue after the year is over,” said Schmidt. “I hate to say when you turn 30, but you start thinking about, in this game, when you’re teeing off on the back nine, you realize that you don’t want to waste anything.

" 'There’s always next year' works when you’re younger. When you’re older, it’s harder, because you only have so many years," said Schmidt. "You start to see that there’s a time where there’s a definitive end to this game. So it’s hard to see another year go. It sucks. The ‘always next year’ approach works for young guys and teams, but it’s hard when you want to be there right now. It’s the most fun time of the year.”

Except when the Stanley Cup playoffs become a spectator sport.

That’s when staring out at a four-month offseason can feel like an eternity.

Yes, there is ample time to put in extra work to get better.

But there’s also a lot of time to have to wait patiently for some or anxiously for others to see what direction the Jets are going to go.

What will happen behind the bench with interim head coach Dave Lowry and his staff?

Could there be core pieces on the move in another foundational trade like the one that brought centre Pierre-Luc Dubois into the fold?

What does the next contract look like for Dubois, a pending restricted free agent, and how long is he willing to commit once his camp and the Jets find a number that is palatable, given the mostly flat-cap landscape.

What’s going to happen on the blue line, where Dylan Samberg looks like a guy that’s not only ready for full-time work but appears to be a guy who is going to be able to avoid being sheltered and should hold a role with the penalty killers?

There are other prospects on the back end who are either pushing for spots immediately or on the verge of knocking on the door, starting with but certainly not limited to Ville Heinola.

There’s not room for all of those guys in the lineup, so that means some moves figure to be on the horizon.

What those look like and who is going to be involved remains to be seen.

“This isn’t even close to where we thought we’d be,” said Dillon. “And that's not to say it means to trade 10 guys or doesn't mean that we need … again, a lot of those decisions are above my pay grade. But for myself and kind of being on the ground here with the guys every day, and just seeing how the year has kind of played out, for everybody going home this summer, it can't just be expecting to come back and having my spot or 'this is my ice time.'

“Whatever that role is, we've all got to at least take that and say 'I want to get better this summer, I want to come back and help the Winnipeg Jets get better,' because this year really was a … it does feel like a waste of a year when you think about what could have been.”

What could have been is something that could haunt the Jets for quite some time or it could provide the fuel and motivation required to enact impactful change.

“We came in here with a belief that we knew we were going to be a playoff team. That’s how we came into training camp,” said Jets forward Nikolaj Ehlers, who scored his 28th goal and set up another in Wednesday’s 4-0 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers. “It was a matter of having the right mentality, playing the right way, and doing all the small things right. I think when you look back now, in this league you have to be a little more humble than that.

“We didn’t play enough good games, obviously, or else we wouldn’t be sitting here right now. That’s on us, that’s on no one else.

"There are really no excuses for us to be in the situation we’re in right now," said Ehlers. "You look at our team, we have a great team. We have a lot of skill, we have young guys, we have older guys. We have, on paper, what it takes to be a playoff team. But a lot of teams that aren’t in the playoffs right now have that.”

With two games remaining in the regular season, including Friday’s showdown with the Calgary Flames (who will enter the playoffs as the second seed in the Western Conference), the Jets are inching toward the finish line, but the real work is just beginning.

By posting consecutive victories, the Jets improved to 37-32-11 overall, and while it’s far too late to change the outcome of this lost season, the individual accolades offer some consolation.

On Wednesday, there was backup goalie Eric Comrie turning in another stellar performance, making 35 saves for his first NHL shutout, improving to 9-5-1 while lowering his goals-against average to 2.55 and raising his save percentage to .921.

There was Dubois notching his career-high 28th goal and there was Kyle Connor, moving past captain Blake Wheeler for the highest single-season of production since the Jets relocated in 2011, reaching 46 goals and 92 points in 77 games after a three-point effort.

“You guys know me by now, it's not like I'm popping Champagne because I hit a certain amount of goals or something,” said Connor. “You expect it of yourself. You put in all the hard work and so when the results come, you're ready for it, you're ready for this stage.”

When teams and individuals can adopt the act-like-you’ve-been-there-before mentality Connor is describing, that’s when strides can be taken to help bridge the gap between where the Jets got this season and ultimately where they want to get to.

“For us, as players, it was an underachieving year for our organization, the players, everybody,” said Schmidt. “I don’t think anybody can look at it and say this is where we wanted to be, in any part of our organization.”