Winnipeg Jets

The slow decline to nothing
March 26, 2017, 1:27 PM ET [7 Comments]
Peter Tessier
Winnipeg Jets Blogger • Winnipeg Jets Writer • RSS • Archive • CONTACT
Byfuglien is out, Laine is a game time decision and Hutchinson starts. This is how it ends again this season for the Jets. The hope of a Calder win all but gone, and four top scorers relegated to playing for their own stats as opposed to rallying for the team in any hope of progress beyond mediocrity.

Oh it's not that this outcome was unlikely, in fact if you go look back to the offseason and preseason there was every reason to believe this outcome was very likely. What has changed is that the optimistic fans are losing faith. The die hards with season tickets, once a valuable commodity can't sell them let alone fill the seats without great effort.

The opposition tonight, the Vancouver Canucks, while just as mediocre and relegated to a similar fate this season has a sense of hope with the signing of Brock Boeser of UND. That's the same team that lone Jets defence prospect Tucker Poolman plays, or did play for. While the Canucks were okay letting Boeser come in and burn a year off his entry level deal for the final games, it appears that the Jets are still in limbo with their prospect.

Consider the situation too, Poolman is as local as it gets for this team. He has not time left in college, the team is done and his family is in Grand Forks ND. Now consider the plight of the Jets defence right now? What harm would it be in letting him come in and finish the season with the team? Let the kid have his money and get him in the fold now.

That's if he still considers the Jets an option. That's a pretty big if right?

There it is folks the difference in what separates tow franchises going in the same direction. One at least makes an action, knowing it won't save the season but can add something to it. While Boeser could have started in Utica for the Canucks did it really matter?

While some other folks on social media have suggested Poolman could be signing soon with the Jets there's no indication this is going to happen from any main stream source. But in the past it has not been main stream media that has broken these college free agent stories.

Oh wouldn't that be something for fans to get a taste of the future of next season? Or would it now? Would they care? That's the litmus test I'm curious about. Is the environment so poisoned that the team has made fans so cynical that apathy has set in?

Probably not but that feeling is growing. I wonder how the players in the room feel?

Regardless of today and the final countdown fans get a 3% increase on season tickets for next season, a survey to fill out and the reassuring notion that the TNSE and the Jets are spending money to upgrade the 13 year old MTS centre concourse. That should help the on-ice results right?

At some point some one has to start asking some hard questions to the coach, the GM and perhaps the owner in an effort to get something about what direction this plane is flying. There's certainly enough information out there, known and the other kind, that could lead to some interesting exchanges should a reporter choose to go down that road.

That's not an easy road though. Screw it up and you have consequences to deal with. While there is no gleaming home that is an icon of the team they way this franchise is run appears to look at lot more like the current White House than any home or business in Friendly Manitoba.