Canada Life Centre will be abuzz Wednesday night with hockey fans – in part because the Montreal Canadiens are in town, but also because the hometown Winnipeg Jets are playing their last home game before the NHL closes shop for the Olympic break.
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For the Jets, a club trying to find its way back to a .500 record and a possible surge in the standings, whatever happens Wednesday will have little bearing on the direction the team will ultimately take coming out of the three-week shutdown.
Although the Jets have played arguably some of their most consistent hockey of the season since ending a franchise-record 11-game losing skid, the organization is most assuredly going to part with some of their older assets and pending free agent capital on or before the March 6 trade deadline.
As such, the team will likely look different when it reconvenes at home again against Chicago on March 3, because for Winnipeg to make the playoffs, we’re sorry to report that the math just doesn’t add up.
Entering Wednesday, the Jets are nine points back of a wild-card spot with 27 games to go. That’s 54 possible points.
Last year, St. Louis was the last playoff qualifier in the West with 96 total points – 44 more than what the Jets currently have.
Now, before your eyes gloss over with numbers, let’s simplify things here. To attain those 44 points, the Jets would have to win around 21 or 22 of their remaining 27 games for a .780 win percentage, or 70 points better than what they produced last year as the best regular-season team in the entire National Hockey League.
Is it possible? Of course.
It is probable. No!
So again, as downtown buzzes with the Canadiens in town and the Jets’ final game before the Olympics, there is little doubt that when Winnipeg returns home in four weeks, it will be a different-looking team in more ways than one.
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