Playoff-bound Jets trying to tamp down expectations

The morning after the Winnipeg Jets clinched a post-season appearance, the club is trying to downplay talk of a long playoff run.

Coach Paul Maurice and his players are sticking to the one-game-at-a-time script, even after they defeated the best team in the league in another nerve-racking, Ativan-inhaling seesaw battle.

On Sunday night, Winnipeg's 5-4 shootout victory over Nashville ensured the Jets will compete for the Stanley Cup for the first time since 2015, when a tougher but far less creative team was swept in four straight games by the Anaheim Ducks.

Expectations this year are far higher for the Jets, who possess the NHL's fourth-best record overall, vastly improved goaltending from Connor Hellebuyck and a trio of gifted young forwards in Patrik Laine, Nikolaj Ehlers and Kyle Connor, who was named the NHL's third star of the week on Monday.

Jets centre Mark Scheifele, however, declined to speculate on how far his team can go — even on a morning when he could have been forgiven for basking in the glow of clinching a playoff berth.

"There's still lots of hockey left. Getting an X beside your name doesn't mean anything. It just means you're in it," Scheifele said following an optional Monday skate.

"You have to get past the first round to get anywhere else. There's no further focus than on the game we have tomorrow against Boston."

Maurice also declined to speculate about the future. Watching an exciting team should be sufficient right now, he told reporters Monday.

"If you went to the game last night, nobody wanted a refund," the coach deadpanned.

The understatement belies the excitement of a fanbase that has primarily known futility since the original Jets joined the NHL in 1979.

In their original incarnation, the Jets only won two playoff series, both against the Calgary Flames. In their current incarnation, they have not won a playoff game.

​In 2015, several hockey pundits predicted the Jets would upset Anaheim.

"We had a grinding, hard game that we played. We were a high-event team, penalties both ways, lots of hits and really a straight line. There was not a lot of creativity. We didn't have it," Maurice recalled of that club, which had no skater like Ehlers, no pure scorer like Laine or no game-breaker like Connor.

"Our team has a slightly different style. A skill-based style. It's changed, but the identity of it, the understanding of the game we have to play is just as good."

That, too, is an obvious understatement.​

"We feel we've been playing the best hockey I think this organization has played," said defenceman Tyler Myers, repeating a talking point his teammates have used all year: everyone on the club has bought into a consistent game plan.

"No matter what's going on throughout a game — if we're down two, up two, tie game — we're coming out, we're bringing the same mindset and the same preparation with every shift."

Fans are hopeful this will translate not just into the first playoff game victory for this particular franchise, but a first-round series victory, a potential series against the Predators and even more.

"There are certain players on the Jets that are getting a little older, so our window to win is the next couple of years," said Rick Lefort at Uptown Sports in Portage Place.

"I would love them to win the cup this year, but if not, we're going to be close."