Still waiting. Six attempts and counting.
Gotta be Monday, right?
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Surely the Winnipeg Jets will use their first "White Out" in 19 years Monday night to record the first playoff victory in the history of this franchise, which feels like Jets 2.0 but is actually the former Atlanta Thrashers.
Those Thrashers were swept in the only playoff series for which they qualified before moving to Manitoba in 2011, and now two losses to the Anaheim Ducks in the opening round of the 2015 Stanley Cup playoffs have the Jets heading home still searching for that elusive triumph.
The script was eerily the same in Game 2 on Saturday night as it was in Game 1 two nights earlier.
A one-goal Winnipeg lead after 40 minutes.
A dumb penalty from a Jets team that has been walking a fine line with the referees all season that allowed the Ducks to tie with a power play goal.
Finally, a late goal, this time by Jakob Silfverberg, to seal Winnipeg’s fate in a game that offered more than a few reasons for the visitors to be disappointed in the officiating.
There was a rather obvious missed goalie interference foul, for example, on Patrick Maroon of the Ducks just before Anaheim erased a 1-0 Jets lead early in the third. Maroon banged into Ondrej Pavelec at the top of his crease, ripping his goal stick loose. Pavelec was able to retrieve his stick, but only just in time before a point shot from Cam Fowler was re-directed by Maroon into the Winnipeg net.
In the final minutes, Anaheim got away with a rather obvious too-many-men penalty, just as Chicago had done so Friday night in Nashville.
Is the game so fast now we can’t count the players?
Shortly thereafter, Silfverberg shrugged off a weak Bryan Little checking attempt against the boards behind the Winnipeg net, walked out in front and ripped a wrist shot past Pavelec with only 21 seconds left in the game to give Anaheim the 2-1 victory.
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But refereeing aside, the Jets need to absorb a fair share of the blame for their own demise.
Just as Mark Scheifele’s roughing call allowed Corey Perry to tie Game 1 early in the third, Andrew Ladd’s obvious high-stick on Ryan Getzlaf set the stage for Maroon’s powerplay goal.
"We put them on the powerplay late in the third. You’ve got to be smarter than that," said Pavelec, who made 37 saves.
That goal gave the Ducks three goals on seven opportunities in the series, wonderful stats for a team that was 28th in the NHL on the power play this season. Winnipeg, by comparison, is 0-7 with the man advantage in the series.
The Jets were also outshot 39-29, including 17-8 in the third when the Ducks again stormed from behind to win.
In a bruising contest that included 81 hits, just two fewer than Game 1, Game 2 also included a brilliant defensive play by Anaheim defenceman Clayton Stoner that may have made a crucial difference. Early in the third, Stoner reached over and hit the blade of Lee Stempniak’s stick with his own blade, just enough to prevent Stempniak from putting what seemed a sure goal into the Ducks net.
That would have made it 2-0. Instead, shortly thereafter, it was 1-1.
It all added up to a Jets defeat. Just days ago there was civic elation in Winnipeg because the Jets had edged out the Stanley Cup champion Los Angeles Kings for a playoff berth. Now, there has to be some degree of local despair over the need to either win four straight or four of five against Anaheim to proceed to the next round of the post-season.
Maybe the White Out will turn the tide, change this series.
If not, well, it should be a blast anyway Monday night at the MTS Centre.
