It’s difficult to sell Tuesday night’s loss to the Dallas Stars as anything other than what it was for the Winnipeg Jets: another loss.
Following the 4-3 home-ice setback, Winnipeg has now won just two of its last 10 games and fallen to NHL .500 for the first time since the beginning of the season.
But when the last four weeks have been a perpetual search for not only answers, but also your game overall, Tuesday night might have offered a glimmer of hope and some signs that better days are, perhaps, ahead.
Of course, falling behind 44 seconds into the game and eventually finding themselves three goals in arrears didn’t provide much optimism from the nearly 14,000 fans in attendance.
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In fact, none of them would be faulted if there were a collective eye-roll and a here-we-go-again sentiment when Dallas scored twice, early in the second.
But the Jets never surrendered.
As the contest progressed, they fought back to get within a goal twice and pushed the Stars right to the final horn — a presence defenceman Neal Pionk mentioned on our post-game show that was “something to build on.”
And he’s right.
There was a lot of foundational work laid Tuesday night, as the Jets looked familiar, like the team they feel they are, or can be again: quick, fast, hard to play against and connected, although there is still plenty of concrete to be poured in order for Winnipeg to build their game back to last year’s form.
But in the end, regardless of the positive takeaways from Tuesday’s game, trying to sell the outcome any other way other than exactly what it was would be difficult, because for the Jets, if it wasn’t a win, it was simply another loss.
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