From a storytelling perspective, of course, the Florida Panthers should be the team that holds the Winnipeg Jets to 15 wins.
The Panthers play a style of hockey the Jets aren’t supposed to be able to match.
That’s how the story goes, anyway.
Put plainly, the Panthers play playoff hockey. They’ve proven it, doubling down on bone-crushing physicality and crease-clearing defence in back-to-back trips to the Stanley Cup Final. The Jets have the NHL’s best record, top power play and most goals, all backed up by the defending Vezina Trophy winner in Connor Hellebuyck, but they still have critics the Panthers don’t have to contend with.
The Panthers are the defending champions in a league that defines legacies not by making it to 15 wins before anybody else but by being the only team to earn 16 wins at playoff time. The Panthers and Jets finished last season with identical 110-point, 52-24-6 records, but Florida pushed all the way to a Stanley Cup championship while Winnipeg lost in Round 1.
So it’s fitting that Florida gave Winnipeg its most lopsided loss of the season on Saturday.
The Panthers are one of the most aggressive forechecking teams in the NHL. They’re better than anybody at getting pucks behind defenders, laying the body and recovering their dump-ins. They demonstrated it on Saturday, recovering pucks at will, getting them back to the point and crashing the net on the inevitable shot while protecting their slot with a ferocity the Jets haven’t seen yet this season.
They won board battles by hook or by crook, and by glass-rattling hits, fighting for every inch of ice with 200-foot stars like Aleksander Barkov and Sam Reinhart and world-class pains like Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennett. Florida’s Cup-winning formula was on full display so the critics had their day.
No amount of early-season success means anything, the story goes because the Jets can’t play playoff hockey. There is a vocal minority of Jets fans who can’t shake the wounds of Winnipeg’s back-to-back first-round exits or the pain of second-half collapses in seasons gone by. Regardless of whether you agree with this perspective, it’s easy to understand its roots. The Jets have started almost as well as this before but haven’t ended the way fans wanted them to. Former coach Rick Bowness criticized the team’s lack of pushback against Vegas, later saying Winnipeg’s resilience had already shown cracks by the middle of the 2022-23 season.
Rick Bowness says Blake Wheeler “took it like a man” when he took the Captaincy away. 👇👇👇 #GoJetsGo pic.twitter.com/QKaCqaxtTv
— Andy Strickland (@andystrickland) November 12, 2024
The Jets have shown tremendous growth since that time. Their highs have gotten higher while their lows haven’t been so low. Excellence has often been habitual as opposed to the product of desperate play. Bowness’ work has been continued by Scott Arniel, with leadership and team culture still contributing directly to team success. But still, there is that background noise: The Jets’ 15-3-0 start won’t mean anything until they beat an elite team. When they beat that elite team, the start won’t mean anything until the Jets replicate it in January and February. If the Jets put together a scorching second half of the season, it won’t mean anything until they win a playoff round.
For anyone who is sick of that criticism, I point you to The Athletic subscriber Charles M.
“Anyone who looks past the great start the Jets have put together in order to fret about an early bounce from this year’s playoffs are turning down a damn good meal served hot today for a feast they hope to have in June,” Charles wrote in a comment last week. “I have no idea what’s going to happen this April so I’m keeping my focus on what’s happening now.”
Whether or not they can solve Florida on Tuesday (remember, the Jets went 2-0 against the Panthers last season and dominated Colorado too) there is wisdom in Charles’ approach. The Jets can’t rewrite their painful playoff history any more than they can erase their regular-season success.
When we zoom out and evaluate the Jets’ 2024-25 season, we will evaluate their ability to survive (or avoid) a second-half slump. We will find out if they can overcome past playoff demons. Those answers are on their way, whether the Jets are ready for them or not.
But we are what we repeatedly do, as Aristotle is often miscredited with saying and Arniel likes to say now. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
Habits are the only thing Winnipeg can control now.
They can only play the schedule that’s in front of them, starting with Tuesday’s rematch against Florida which should be appointment viewing for fans across the NHL.
Winnipeg has some tidying up to do at five-on-five, where its defencemen need to get the puck moving up ice faster than they did last week. Those defencemen will need outlets, so Winnipeg’s forwards will need to get down low and help faster than they did last week. When the Jets get into the offensive zone cleanly, they tend to be able to find ways to get the puck to the net. When they struggle, as they did against the Cup-calibre pace and pressure of the Panthers on Saturday, they get stuck in their own zone for long stretches where elite teams like Florida can make them pay.
The Jets can’t win a playoff game on Tuesday. They can’t atone for playoff performances against Colorado in 2024 or Vegas in 2023 during the six-game road trip that starts on Friday. But step by step, shift by shift, Winnipeg can show itself and its critics that it can take a punch from a proven playoff performer and come back swinging, playing the best version of its own game.
(Photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
