The Playoff Picture

As the last few weeks of the 2014-2015 NHL regular season wound down, Jets’ fans were hanging on to their seats as they watched their team battle for a playoff spot. The 2.0 Jets had not made the playoffs since relocating from Atlanta but after Chevy’s blockbuster trade with Buffalo-the players, organization and city were determined to make this year, our year. However, with so much time and energy put into “making it”, paired with an unpredictable Western Conference, things were difficult to predict when it came to potential match-ups. Are we in? Are we golfing? Is it the Blues? Or is the Ducks?

After locking up the fifth spot in the Central Division and a 5-1 shellacking of the Calgary Flames in the final game of the season, the Winnipeg Jets find themselves down 1-0 in the first round against a very formidable opponent in the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. The Jets went 0-1-2 against the Ducks this year who finished with 109 points and whose roster boasts the likes of Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry and Ryan Kesler. Getzlaf and Perry were both a part of the 2007 Anaheim team, who won the Stanley Cup under former Winnipeg Jet great, Randy Carlyle.

The Jets will take to the ice tonight in Anaheim to try and steal one game on the road before the series shifts back to Winnipeg. The concentration of the players and coaches alike cannot go further than that. The same does not go for the anxious fans who must sit and wait for that unfamiliar Pacific Coast start time. Some sit on patios, others in basement rooms that double as team shrines and then there are those who spend their time digging and researching every factorial piece of information that pertains to the history of these two clubs. A history that not unlike this series, is hostile and dates back to February 6th, 1996. The day the Ducks stole Teemu Selanne.

The Golden Boy

With all due respect to former WBC Light Heavyweight Champion Donny “Golden Boy” Lalonde, who was nicknamed after the Manitoba Legislative Building’s statue, the city lost its “Golden Boy” in the winter of 1996 when he was shipped to California with Marc Chouinard and a 4th round pick for Oleg Tverdovsky, Chad Kilger and a 3rd round pick. Tverdovsky and Kilger would combine for a total of 13 points while wearing the blue, red and white. The writing was on the wall for the Jets and their ever pending relocation to the dessert. The Jets would go on to bow out to the Detroit Red Wings in the playoffs, before a tearful goodbye and a move south to Phoenix.

Almost twenty years later, Selanne is retired and the Jets are back- locked in a series with the team who Teemu won a Stanley Cup and hung up his skates with. The 2.0 Jets are concentrated on the next hit, pass and shot- as are the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. The parallels between life and hockey seem to be never ending as fans sit and wait, analyzing every stat and stripping back the layers of every issue like peeling an onion. A word of advice to the Ducks’ fan who is planning on wearing their jersey to the first Whiteout in the city of long winters and even longer memories- The Teemu Layer, it’s still a sour one.