With one regular season game remaining for the Winnipeg Jets, maybe it’s only fitting that there is an extra day for fans to savour what their team has accomplished before the stress of the playoffs kicks in later in the week.
Just think, for a moment, of these past seven days for the Jets.
It began last Monday with a dominant, ‘get back in the driver’s seat of the Central Division race’ 3-1 victory over St. Louis. The win was not only a response to a subpar performance in Utah the game before, it also ended the Blues’ 12-game winning streak — and sent a message to a potential first-round playoff opponent.
Twenty-four hours later, Dallas suffered a historic collapse in an overtime loss to Vancouver, which brought us to Thursday and that epic 4-0 beatdown of the Stars in Texas — all but mathematically ending any chance for the defending division champs to repeat.
Saturday in Chicago set the stage for a predictable letdown against the last place Hawks, but like they have done for a great part of this season, the Jets found a way to succeed on a night when they clearly did not have their best stuff.
On this occasion, the reward was the first-ever division and conference title in Winnipeg’s NHL history.
That set the table for Sunday night at Canada Life Centre in the somewhat meaningless 4-1 loss to Edmonton. The 15th sellout crowd of the season honoured the Jets in the third period with a standing ovation for winning the Presidents’ Trophy as the NHL’s best regular season team — a result of Washington’s 4-1 loss to Columbus.
As head coach Scott Arniel confirmed afterwards, capturing that piece of hardware was not on the team’s list of goals at the start of the season.
But, if finishing at the top of the 32-team, 82-game tournament becomes part of what matters in about two months from now, it will be a nice addition to the collection.
