Following a road trip that began with so much promise, the Winnipeg Jets are returning home back to square one — or perhaps a starting position even less than that.
In a span of less than one week, the Jets went from March gladness on Broadway, to March badness in New Jersey and on Long Island, and then to maybe a touch of March sadness in Washington. That 3-0 loss on Saturday was not a fair return on the investment Winnipeg poured into that game.
How can a team with Stanley Cup dreams go to such extremes? The question comes with a huge and very legitimate question mark for this crew.
And it comes just when you might have thought the Jets had it all figured out and were ready to be that team, the one that fans could trust to perform at a certain level, night in and night out.
That isn’t the Winnipeg Jets right now, and it hasn’t been for a while. The three straight wins over Anaheim, Columbus and the Rangers are about as close as they have come to attaining that standard beyond the “one and done” routine for most of the past two months.
Less than four weeks from now, when the playoffs begin, are the Jets going to be capable of stringing together enough quality efforts to compete with, let alone beat, a Dallas or Colorado in round one?
And therein lies the rub. Nights like last Tuesday at Madison Square Garden? The answer is, “hell yeah.”
But there have been just as many, or more occasions, like the past 96 hours, when the consensus is a resounding no.
Welcome to the Winnipeg Jets’ version of March Madness, when even the most faithful followers might be about ready to go out and bust a few brackets, or do anything else to take out their frustrations.