Winnipeg Set for First Trip to the Playoffs

Scouts all over the National Hockey League say one thing about the Winnipeg Jets: “Nobody wants to play against these guys.”

With a hard-working system that combines a hard-nosed, aggressive forecheck with a patient chip-it-in, chip-it-out approach to the game, the Jets are a team that might not get a lot of chances, but they certainly don’t give up very many. It also doesn’t hurt that goaltender Ondrej Pavalec is white hot. This is the one team that can beat any other team in the NHL and have proved it, on more than one occasion, this past season.

Winnipeg loves the Jets (Photo by James Carey Lauder)

With one game remaining, Saturday afternoon against the Calgary Flames, the Jets are locked into the second wild card spot in the West and while all eight Western Conference teams have been set for the playoffs, the pairings have not.

The Jets will play the higher finisher of the two division champions after the 2014-15 season comes to an end on Saturday. Amazingly, all 30 teams play on Saturday. Based on what we already know, it’s likely the Jets will face Anaheim in the opening round.

On Thursday, the St. Louis Blues clinched first place in the Central Division with a 2-1 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks, and with Minnesota’s 4-2 win over Nashville. The Blues and the Pacific Division champion Ducks each have 107 points; the Ducks have the tiebreaker edge with 41 regulation/overtime wins to 40 for the Blues.

Nashville will finish second in the Central. The third-place Blackhawks are two points ahead of the Wild. The Vancouver Canucks, currently second in the Pacific Division, will play Calgary in the first round. The Canucks lead the Flames by two points and can assure themselves of the home-ice advantage in their series by earning one point in their season finale against the Edmonton Oilers.

The Jets won three of four and got seven of eight points without Big Buff (Photo by Jeff Miller)

Calgary, of course, finishes the season at Winnipeg’s MTS Centre, Saturday at 2 p.m. The Stanley Cup Playoffs being April 15.

Between now and next Wednesday, Jets head coach Paul Maurice will have to come to terms with a couple of scenarios:

After his defense played brilliantly down the stretch for four games without Toby Enstrom and Dustin Byfuglien , does he disrupt something that is going well, just to get some star players back into the lineup. He could always make Byfuglien a forward again.


Byfuglien at forward might be his best alternative if Mathieu Perreault, who was injured on Thursday night, can’t answer the bell come next week.

“There have been two or three times over the course of the year, especially lately, when we’ve faced some pretty significant adversity,” said head coach Paul Maurice, as he reflected on his team’s playoff run during his televised post-game news conference on Thursday.

“We had Byfuglien and Little go down for such a long time and that hurt us and Buff’s suspension, but we lost those two games last week and it was just so painful… the thought that that group could work as hard as it did and overcome as much as it did and the idea that you wouldn’t get the payoff for it just seemed wrong.

“It’s been a pleasure for me to work behind the bench. It’s been a really enjoyable year to go to the rink every day because they were going to work as hard as they could. I’m happy for them, they earned it. They worked so hard and did all the right things. They hung in there when it was dark and ugly and huddled through injuries and played in the toughest division in hockey… they earned it I’m happy for them.

Is this the NHL’s coach of the year? (Photo by James Carey Lauder)

Posted by: Scott Taylor for RiverCitySports.com