The Chicago Blackhawks have lost seven home games this season. Three of those losses are to one team: the Winnipeg Jets.
That is not an indictment of the Hawks but a sign of the remarkable turnaround by Winnipeg, a turnaround in which smarts have proved stronger than adversity.
It starts at the top, with Jets executives. No star free agent wants to sign with Winnipeg (small market, cold) so the team have become adept at unearthing hidden value.
Mathieu Perreault is one example. He was not a big name in the off-season. But the stats from his time in Anaheim showed he was strong in puck possession and that when he was on the ice his team tended to get scoring opportunities.
Perreault signed with the Jets for three years and US$9 million (Dh33m) – hardly a bank-breaker. He has added to Winnipeg’s depth, scoring 15 goals and ranking fifth on the team in points per 60 minutes of ice time (1.75).
When the Jets’ four leading defencemen went down with injuries the season could have become a shambles. But in early December the coach, Paul Maurice, astutely moved the forward Dustin Byfuglien on to the blue line. Byfuglien has not only anchored the defence, his offence has improved from his new position – 17 points in 26 games as a forward, exceeded by 20 points in 21 games as a defender. And while he was minus-1 as a forward, he is plus-7 as a defender.
Byfuglien is a large lad at 1.96 metres and 118 kilograms. Which brings us to the Jets’ next strength: size. This is a big team. When they are sitting on the bench they look like a bunch of lumberjacks. Their average height is a little over 1.88m and average weight 94kg.
When Winnipeg most recently won in Chicago, 4-2 on January 16, the Hawks assistant coach Mike Kitchen said after the second period: “There’s not a lot of room to move down there on the ice. We’re getting closed off very quickly. It’s a real man’s game down there.”
Working hard allows the Jets to take advantage of their size. The first goal in last Wednesday’s 4-0 shellacking of Columbus was exemplary.
In the Columbus corner, Winnipeg’s Andrew Ladd attacks Nick Foligno, who quickly sends a pass darting around the end boards. It comes to Columbus’s Jeremy Morin but Blake Wheeler knocks Morin off balance and then Bryan Little rushes in to steal the puck. Meantime Ladd and Wheeler are crashing towards the net. Little fires to Ladd in the high slot, who jams it ahead to Wheeler, who knocks it over Sergei Bobrovsky for the goal. And the rout is on.
The Columbus coach Todd Richards had seen it coming when he sized up the Jets before the game: “They play hard, they play fast. They’re big.”
Looking ahead, the question for the Jets will be whether to be a buyer before the March 2 trade deadline. They could use another forward, and the rugged veteran Shane Doan – the last man in the league to have played for the Jets in their first incarnation, before the franchise absconded to Phoenix in 1996 – could tempt.
The way they are playing, Winnipeg might be best off letting things evolve without personnel changes. This already is a team nobody wants to face in the first round of the play-offs.
rmckenzie@thenational.ae
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