How Winnipeg Jets’ unforced errors put their Central Division title hopes at risk

Sports

add

The Winnipeg Jets are still the favourite to win the Central Division, but Tuesday night in Los Angeles, they made their goal of finishing in first place more difficult.

That they lost 4-1 to the Kings on the same night St. Louis passed Minnesota, turning the Wild into the division winner’s most likely first-round opponent — as opposed to Colorado, waiting to play the second seed — made their mistakes all the more costly.

Eight and a half minutes into the first period, Colin Miller bounced a puck past Mark Scheifele to Joel Edmundson, setting up Trevor Moore’s deflection goal. A little over a minute later, David Gustafsson tried to bolt up the boards but gave the puck to Andrei Kuzmenko as Josh Morrissey and Dylan DeMelo tried to change, leading directly to Anze Kopitar’s goal.

Then, after Cole Perfetti looked off Kyle Connor and handcuffed Darcy Kuemper with a shot to bring the Jets within a goal, Kuzmenko stole a puck from Logan Stanley in the neutral zone. This was the most egregious of the three errors, as Stanley tried to beat the quicker Kuzmenko with a neutral zone deke but fell as he attempted to retreat toward Winnipeg’s net. The dual error sent Kuzmenko and Adrian Kempe on a fast two-on-one break against Haydn Fleury that ultimately led to Kuzmenko’s unassisted goal.

Second time Jets have lost a puck in the neutral zone and get burned by it.

Logan Stanley trying to channel his inner Cale Makar but doesn’t quite get it to go.

Kuzmenko makes it a 3-1 game. pic.twitter.com/Vw25ocN6io

— Dave Minuk (@ICdave) April 2, 2025

In all three cases, the play started with the puck on a Jets player’s stick. Give the Kings credit for their stifling neutral zone play. Give the Jets credit for getting through that neutral zone for the better part of the game, even if the middle of the ice in the offensive zone was tough to come by.

But Winnipeg fed the Kings in transition, playing right into L.A.’s style of play.

“We turned the puck over three times and it ended up in the back of our net,” Jets coach Scott Arniel told reporters after the game.

The Jets’ unforced errors leave them just four points up on Dallas for first place in the division. The Jets and Stars are tied with 40 regulation wins each, but Dallas has a game in hand on Winnipeg. If the Stars win that extra game — and then beat Winnipeg when the teams meet on April 10 — Dallas will take top spot from the Jets. The playoffs are tough no matter who you play, but there appears to be a world of difference between the Avalanche (94 points, +40 goal differential, 6-2-2 in their last 10) and Wild (88 points, -10 goal differential, 4-4-2 in their last 10). The playoffs can be a war of attrition; short, early series combined with good health can go a long way toward a deep run.

This brings us to Winnipeg’s next unforced error. Luke Schenn left Tuesday’s morning skate with what Arniel called “stiffness” and is now day to day. Neal Pionk is still working his way back from his lower-body injury. The Jets ran Miller on the second pair with Dylan Samberg, leaving Miller exposed in a top-four role, while Stanley and Fleury played together on the third pair. In an ideal world, Pionk and Schenn would be healthy, leaving the Jets to pick between Miller, Stanley and Fleury — not to mention Ville Heinola, who, while healthy, has gone over a month between games twice now — as the sixth defenceman.

In an even more ideal world, the Jets would have found a better way to insulate themselves from this type of issue at the trade deadline. Any deep playoff run is going to test Winnipeg’s depth. Florida won the Stanley Cup in 2024 with the same six defencemen playing in every game, but the Panthers are the exception to the rule; the previous 11 Cup winners all used at least seven defencemen, while Schenn’s 2020 Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning used nine. When everyone is healthy, Miller, Fleury, Stanley and Heinola are Winnipeg’s Nos. 6-9 defencemen.

Let’s be clear: We’re still talking about a Cup-contending team. But the Jets got badly burned by three specific mistakes in a hockey game, which gives us the pretense to discuss some of the playoff challenges they face.

If the Jets’ defence corps returns to full health, we could once again see the pairs used in Schenn’s first game after the Jets acquired him: Morrissey-DeMelo, Samberg-Pionk and Fleury-Schenn. Does that give you confidence?

A reporter from Los Angeles asked Arniel if he felt that the Kings were a measuring stick game for Winnipeg. Not only did Tuesday’s Jets loss give Winnipeg an 0-2-1 record against L.A. this season, but the Kings held Winnipeg to an average of 17 shots in those three games.

“For us? A measuring stick? Whoa,” Arniel said. “We’re sitting on top right now.”

The coach has a point there.

As much as I believe the Kings are a bad stylistic fit for the Jets, we’ve only recently seen how little a season series can mean.

Winnipeg scorched its way into last year’s playoffs with an eight-game winning streak. In four of those games, the Jets beat division rivals Minnesota, Nashville, Dallas and Colorado by a combined score of 18-5, shutting out the Stars and Avalanche in back-to-back games on the road. It made sense for Jets fans to expect first-round success against Colorado after that torrid run, combined with a 3-0-0 record against the Avalanche during the season.

However, Jets fans know how that story ended. The job isn’t done until a team wins four games in a playoff round — and then repeats itself in three more rounds.

Despite Tuesday’s loss to the Kings, I still believe Winnipeg is playing at a higher level right now than it did last season, even when compared only to the Jets’ season-ending eight-game winning streak. The Jets have a higher share of shot attempts and shots on target over their last 10 games, including Tuesday’s loss, than they did during that streak. They’re also first in the league in five-on-five expected goals percentage during that time frame by multiple public models.

STRAIGHT OUTTA THE BOX ▶️ BACK OF THE NET 🚨 pic.twitter.com/h6SXDGtX09

— Winnipeg Jets (@NHLJets) April 2, 2025

Winnipeg has been controlling the flow of play to such a degree that I recently asked Arniel if he thought this year’s team was better than the one that won all of those games to end last season. Arniel paused, stopped short of saying he agreed with me, and then gave me an answer that gave me confidence in my premise. It’s an answer rooted in intangibles and, based on my view of this season’s Jets, it’s exactly right.

“We’ve been playing at a high level for 74 games, in my opinion,” Arniel said. “We’ve done a really good job of staying away from the low lows. The way we’ve been able to focus and put a game behind us and move forward to the next one … last year, there were some tough games and tough stretches.”

Don’t underestimate the importance of the resilience Arniel is invoking here.

It’s been six years since Winnipeg won a single playoff game after losing one: The Jets dropped four straight to Colorado in 2024, four straight to Vegas in 2023 and four straight to Montreal (after sweeping Edmonton) in 2021. Winnipeg did win Game 2 of its 2020 qualification round series after losing Game 1, but we’re not counting that because it wasn’t a playoff series. The last time the Jets won even one playoff game after losing one was in 2019 when they won two — Games 3 and 4 — after going down 2-0 against St. Louis.

So, yeah. It’s important that the Jets have demonstrated a higher level of day-to-day consistency and resilience.

Are they better than last year’s team, though? Including the version that outscored its opponents 35-15 on the way to an 8-0-0 finish to last season?

“I just think this is a good hockey team that knows how to play night in and night out,” Arniel said. “They know when we’re successful … When we play the way we have to play. I don’t know if it’s any different. You may have those analytics or those stats. I just think that we’re a confident group. From game one of the season to where we are today, when we play at our best, we’re a tough team to play against.”

That doesn’t automatically mean Winnipeg will fend off the Stars for first place in the Central Division. The Jets have a tougher end-of-season schedule than Dallas does, with games against Vegas, Utah, St. Louis, Dallas, Chicago, Edmonton and Anaheim. The Stars play Nashville, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Utah, Detroit and Nashville again.

I think the bitter nature of the loss to L.A. will go further in memory than the many things the Jets did right. In a sample this small, unforced errors like the ones Winnipeg made on Tuesday can undercut excellence in other facets of the game. I haven’t come to expect those unforced errors from this year’s Jets; cut them out now and fend off the Stars’ late-season surge.

(Photo: Kiyoshi Mio / Imagn Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

Share on

email

Previous

trending_flat

He grew up idolizing Tim Tebow, but now Florida’s Thomas Haugh is carving his own legacy during Final Four run

Sports

Next

trending_flat

Man Utd Women head coach Skinner signs new contract

News Story