Following a 5-1 loss in Colorado on Sunday afternoon, the legacy lives on for the Winnipeg Jets. And it’s one this team and organization can’t possibly be proud of.
Two-and-14. Nine consecutive losses. That’s the Jets’ record coming off a playoff defeat since the start of the 2018 Western Conference final versus Vegas.
The last time Winnipeg responded to a postseason setback with a victory was in the bubble, four years ago in Game 2 vs Calgary.
And while players, coaches and GMs summarily dismiss year-to-year comparisons — at least in public — that lengthy run of futility has come with a core of players we like to refer to as “the central six”: goalie Connor Hellebuyck, defenceman Josh Morrissey, and the quartet of Mark Scheifele, Adam Lowry, Kyle Connor and Nikolaj Ehlers up front.
This talented group, along with a variety of supporting cast members, has not been able to solve the Rubik’s Cube of successfully applying a tourniquet to stop the postseason bleeding, no matter how hard they have tried. And lord knows they have tried.
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In Games 3 and 4 of this current series versus Colorado, it has been a parade of penalties, resulting in an Avalanche of power play goals — although the dagger Sunday afternoon was a Bobby Orr-esque end-to-end rush by Cale Makar, defended unsuccessfully by all five Winnipeg players on the ice.
So now, with Game 5 beckoning Tuesday night at Canada Life Centre, there is one final opportunity, for this spring, to at least alter the narrative about a team that hasn’t been able to bump the slump for the past four postseasons plus.
Especially for the half dozen players who have suffered through every minute of that misery.