As the Mark Scheifele era hangs in the balance with his current contract situation, I’ve been finding myself getting a little philosophical. Questions like, “has this been a successful team?”, or “what’s the value of one conference final appearance as a fan?”, have been swirling through my head.
Maybe it’s just the dead days of the off season. Or maybe it’s the summer heat.
Regardless, trying to walk the fine balance of appreciating the good to great hockey teams we’ve had over the past decade while also maintaining high expectations has been a challenge. We as fans can become salty rather easily, as the post-Dustin Byfuglien era has proven.
But there’s a parallel to real life that can be drawn here. If your goal is to go to the gym 5 times per week, but you generally only make it 4 times per week, in some ways, you’ve failed. Yet the kinder, more realistic way to see it is that by striving to make it 5 times, you’ve made it 4 times, which is frequent enough to produce results, get stronger or more fit, and perhaps give your self-esteem a jolt in the right direction. It is still a level of meaningful success.
And that’s where I see this Jets team at as they navigate these rather unclear waters. We have never achieved Stanley Cup victory. We have iced one great team, and many very good ones. Yet we have one memorable playoff run to show for it (curse you Vegas), and a separate series win in the rather odd and forgettable North Division season.
It all seemed so promising. Yet this team peaked half a decade ago, and, despite last year’s 50 game destruction of the National Hockey League (what a tease that was), it doesn’t feel like we’re getting back to those heights any time soon.
So I decided to look at the team’s total amount of Regulation + Overtime Wins (ROW) since we rejoined the league in 2011 to see if we can find some optimism akin to my gym habit example above. We’ve never been great. But we’ve been pretty darn good, for a while, haven’t we?
Right??
Why yes, we have. In fact, we have 428 ROW since 2011, good for 12th in the league. It puts us in the upper half, which means we’ve had a lot of good hockey to enjoy. The Jets are among a tight group ranked 7-12 in the league, separated by just 8 ROW. Which means if the Jets had won 9 more games over the past decade-plus without the shootout, we could be 7th in the league. Which sorta feels like it would be something worth bragging about.
Alas, we are not. But we are firmly entrenched in the 2nd tier, a testament to this franchise’s consistency and ability to ice a winning product.
Sorting by points percentage, however, paints a slightly different picture, where Winnipeg now places 16th out of the 32 franchises, with a .560 points percentage. If you pro-rated that to 82 games, the Jets have on average played to a 92 point season. Which illustrates frustratingly well how this team’s existence has felt of late – good enough to string together meaningful runs of victories – but never good enough to be more than just on the bubble of the playoffs.
These are the team’s three best season to date, sorted by points percentage, with points in brackets:
2017-18: .695 (114)
2018-19: .604 (99)
2014-15: .604 (99)
Meanwhile, our three worst seasons are:
2015-16: .476 (78)
2013-14: .512 (84)
2011-12: .512 (84)
(Note that last season was actually our 4th best season.)
And that shows us the blessing and the curse of Jets fandom. One great team. Two rather good teams. On the flip side, we’ve never been terrible, never close to a bottom 5 team. Where should our emotions lie? Is it thankful for never producing a putrid product? Is it frustrated for seemingly high potential never being realized? Or worse, is it apathy, not really caring how the team does because we know it’s not good enough to do damage in the playoffs?
I’ll take the optimistic route, I guess. If Vegas has shown anything with their Cup win, it’s that depth up front matters, and size on the blue line matters. With the Pierre-Luc Dubois trade, in combination with the trades for Nino Niederreiter and Vladislav Namestnikov, I feel like this could be the deepest forward group we’ve iced in years. We also have a decently sized blue line, though it is not without its questions marks.
I see this team as one in the mix for the playoff race.
If things go really well, perhaps we can comfortably make it in and lock up the 2 or 3 seed in the division.
Am I just drinking that eternally optimistic off-season Kool-Aid?
Probably. But it’s pretty hot out these days, and it tastes delicious.
Puck drop can’t come soon enough.