WINNIPEG — The game may have changed markedly over the years, but spinning a loss in the playoffs surely has not.
When you lose the first one, it’s time to remind the media and fans that it’s a marathon, not a sprint. "You’re losing games in the playoffs," Winnipeg Jets head coach Paul Maurice instructed after a Game 1 loss to the St. Louis Blues. "That’s just a fact."
Lose another, and you’ll get the old, "Well, they beat us twice in here. Now we’ve just got to do the same thing to them in their barn."
We are partial believers of the theme emanating from the Jets dressing room Wednesday night, after a 2-1 series-opening loss to the stocky, physical Blues. And we’ll wait until after Game 2 on Friday night to address what comes next.
But we’d say this: The Jets had better not fall behind St. Louis 2-0, or this series — and the Winnipeg Whiteout — will be severely truncated.
But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
"It’s just one. It’s not four," Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck pointed out. "We’re going to get right back at it and continue fighting."
"They made one more play than we did," added captain Blake Wheeler.
The Jets, they are a riddle. Not only do their lines look nothing like they did a year ago — heck, even three weeks ago — but neither does the Jets’ alignment.
Somehow, for Game 1 of the playoffs, Maurice’s blender spit out lines that had Mathieu Perreault on the second line, Andrew Copp on the third line, and solid third-line winger Adam Lowry centering Line 4. If you follow this team inch by inch, like an entire province does, maybe it makes sense.
But walking in for a playoff series you wonder: What has happened here in 12 months that such change is afoot? Can an injury to one fourth-line winger (Brandon Tanev) create such flux?
Whatever the case, the Jets come into the playoffs having lost five of their last seven games, in search of whatever juice they had that brought them to the Western Conference Final a year ago.
In Game 1 against St. Louis, they found some of it. Sort of.
"We came out the right way," speedy winger Nikolaj Ehlers said. "I think we played a really good game for two periods, and some of the third. Umm… yeah."
Some of the third? That would be where the Blues took this game away, walking out of the dressing room after 40 minutes trailing 1-0, stomping on the gas and pulling away on goals by David Perron and Tyler Bozak.
"You want to put together the full 60," lamented Ehlers. "You’re not going to do it every single game, but you want to try. We fought really hard today, that’s one thing we’re really happy with."
This is where the Jets find themselves on Thursday morning, caught between the fact they only scored once at home, and the realization that they took the best team in the Western Conference (since Jan. 1) right to the wire in an old-time, physical playoff battle that, by rights, should have made it to overtime. But with 12.5 seconds to play, Blues stellar rookie Jordan Binnington lunged across his crease to deny Mark Scheifele on a fulsome one-timer, the kind of goal that went in all spring long a year ago, as Scheifele blistered 14 playoff goals for the Jets.
So, Winnipeg was close. And the struggling Patrik Laine scored once, and hit a post. The goaltending held up just fine, and the Jets gave as good as they got on the physicality scale.
But here’s the bad news: When the game was on the line, St. Louis was better. They got bigger saves, they had cleaner chances, and they won most of the 50/50 pucks that decide a series like this. If this was the Jets’ maiden playoff voyage, they’d take some solace in a performance like this.
But it isn’t. And even though they say they will, they won’t.
In the end, the hero was wearing white No. 7, as Patrick Maroon came off the bench to make a lovely play, setting up Bozak’s winner. Maroon’s grandfather, Ernest Ferrara, had passed away on Tuesday, at age 95. He’d barely checked in upstairs when his strapping, bearded grandson was making a dazzling play behind the Jets goal, sending a puck out front that the ex-Maple Leaf Bozak buried for the game-winner.
"I guess he was watching me tonight. He was watching from above," Maroon said of his grandpa. "Obviously, that was for him. It’s been emotional, tough days for me. Being with the guys and having them by my side has been really good."
It was a nice story. The kind that kicks off one of those playoff runs stacked deep with a lot of different heroes, and a coffee table book full of stories like the one about Grandpa Ernie.
There was only one problem: Winnipeg played the supporting role in this opening chapter.
They’ve got some work to do, these Jets. Lest they be a footnote for the Bluenote, and a sad country song compared to the way they rocked this town a year ago.
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