It wasn’t the season the Winnipeg Jets had in mind, something their captain Blake Wheeler made very clear in a press conference on Thursday.
Wheeler spoke with the media after the Vegas Golden Knights beat the Washington Capitals 4-3 in overtime on Wednesday night, officially eliminating the Jets from the playoffs.
“This is the best part of the year to be a hockey player, except when you’re in our shoes, then it’s the worst,” said Wheeler. “It’s really disappointing. It’s hard to put into words, the feeling and, you know, what it feels like. It just feels like we’re back to square one. We built so long to get to a championship level and sitting here is pretty deflating.”
The Jets had high expectations after a sweep of Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers in 2021, before getting swept themselves in the second round to the Montreal Canadiens.
“I said it before the year, be careful of what the word ‘expectations’ means,” said Wheeler. “There have been years in the past where the expectations were really low and we had really good teams and were competing for championships. This year, it seemed like expectations were high and we’ve obviously fallen well short of those.”
It was a season of inconsistency for the Jets, as they could only string together winning streaks of three games four times this season, and only had one four game winning streak. It’s the seventh time in 11 seasons since moving to Winnipeg that the team has missed out on the playoffs, including the loss to the Calgary Flames in the play-in round in 2020.
“I hate what’s going on right now. I hate losing,” said Wheeler. “That’s not just me, we have a lot of guys who don’t like losing and don’t like the results that we’re getting.”
It was a bit of a disappointing season for Wheeler as well. While he did miss 17 games this season, his 13 goals as of right now are the worst of his career, including the lockout-shortened season in 2013 and the pandemic-shortened season in 2021, and his 55 points are his worst in a non-shortened season since 2010-11. Add in the fact that 18 of those points were secondary assists, and his 49.84% CF% and 46.37% xGF% at 5v5 are also some of the worst play-driving numbers of his career, and it becomes a season to forget for the winger. But, he takes his fair share of the blame.
“It’s been my job to build the culture here and I’ve taken a lot of pride in that over the years,” said Wheeler. “I certainly look in the mirror on that one, and where we’ve gotten to, the team that we were and the team that we are now — I don’t hide from that at all. I certainly take the responsibility for where this team sits.”
The Jets will have more than $15 million in cap space this summer, but won’t have as much room to play with once they re-sign pending RFA Pierre-Luc Dubois and either re-sign Paul Stastny or use that space to replace him. Beyond the moves in the offseason, Wheeler stresses it’s about getting back to the form and mindset of their past successful teams.
“Well, I think that’s the idea, to regain the form that we had that made us a contender,” said Wheeler. “I don’t think it’s a matter of snapping your fingers. In large part, we have a group of really good hockey players. Just how do you fit that into a good team? That’s our job.”
At the very least, the Jets have their core together for a while. Beyond Dubois and Stastny, the Jets have the rest of their top six, their top five defenders and their starting goalie all locked up until the end of 2024. But it’s if this the right core to have locked up that will determine if this team returns to contender status quickly.
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