Blake Wheeler heads to the net.
TAMPA — Watching the Winnipeg Jets get shut out in Montreal on Sunday afternoon should have been the last straw for those Winnipeg Jets fans who would actually like to see their team in the playoffs this spring.
Patience is wonderful. All Jets fans understand that the plan from the start of this season was to build slowly and surely through the draft, develop the players in the system and see where the concept would lead.
Unfortunately, the Jets brass also said it expected to make the playoffs this year. That was the goal: Make the playoffs in 2012.
Sadly, if the Jets don’t get a scorer or two between now and the trade deadline on Feb. 27, it’s unlikely that part of the bargaining will be kept.
We’ll say it one more time: The Winnipeg Jets can’t score goals. Period. Sunday afternoon at the Bell Centre in Montreal, the Montreal Canadiens shut out the Jets 3-0. Winnipeg hard chances to score, they simply couldn’t finish.
As a result, the Jets finished a four-game post-all-star-break road trip by scoring three goals in regulation time in four games to finish the trip 2-2-0. Carey Price made 23 saves to get the shutout on Sunday while Thomas Plekanec led the Habs with a goal and an assist. It’s not like the Habs had been setting the NHL world on fire. They’d lost three straight going in and were dead last in the East.
Captain Andrew Ladd has 16 goals, but he hasn't scored in his last seven games and has one in his last 10.
The 24-24-6 Jets are still in 10th place in the Eastern Conference, six points behind eighth-place Toronto and five back of the Florida Panthers, the first place team in the Southeast Division.
All is not lost. At least, not yet. But at some point, this Jets team will have to figure out a way to score some goals. Consider this:
1) The Jets are the lowest scoring team in the NHL’s Eastern Conference, averaging just 2.38 goals per game. The Islanders are averaging 2.43 goals per game while the Buffalo Sabres are averaging 2.41 goals per game.
2) Since the all-star break, the Jets have won 2-1 in a shootout (Philadelphia), 2-1 in overtime (Tampa), lost 2-1 in regulation (Florida) and lost 3-0 (Montreal). They have three goals in regulation and four if you add in 10 minutes of overtime.
3) The team;’s leading scorer, Blake Wheeler, has 10 goals and 35 points and is 77th in scoring in the NHL. The team’s leading goal-scorer, the concussed Evander Kane, has 18 goals and is tied for 39th in the NHL. Andrew Ladd has 16 goals, but he hasn’t scored one goal in the past seven and has only one in the last 10.
4) The Jets, as a team, are minus-21. That’s 24th in team plus-minus in the NHL.
The Jets need Evander Kane to come back and score.
5) Since the New Year, the Jets are 5-10-1. They have scored 22 goals in regulation time in those 16 games. they have been shut out four times and are 3-3-0 in 2-1 games. All three of their wins have come in extra time.
Defensively the Jets have been solid. No one can argue that the Winnipegs play hard. Ondrej Pavelec and Chris Mason have both been outstanding in goal, as well. But unless this team can start to score more than one goal a game on a consistent basis, it won’t go anywhere this season — even with a stretch of eight straight games at home coming up at the end of this month.
It might be time for GM Kevin Cheveldayoff to think about doing something to find a scorer. If nothing else, maybe he could add a tough guy so Blake Wheeler, just about the only guy on the team who actually goes to the net, doesn’t have to drop his gloves with the likes of P.K. Subban and defend his team’s honor from the penalty box.