Winnipeg Jets are 'hottest team in the NHL' as playoffs get underway

The Winnipeg Jets are soaring into the playoffs on an 8 game-winning streak, finishing up the season last night with a four two win over the Vancouver Canucks. The team and the fans are getting ready for game one against the Colorado Avalanche on Sunday. And to tee it all up for us is hockey reporter Sean Reynolds. Sean, thanks so much for joining us anytime, Brittany. Sean, big finish to the season last night for The Jets. They’ve been on A roll. How’s the team looking going into the playoffs for you? They’re looking quite simply, like the hottest team in the NHL heading into the playoffs. And it’s very interesting because if you would have gone back before those eight games that they reeled off to end the season, they lost six straight games and looked like a team that didn’t really know what its identity was. Now, eight games left in the season, that’s not a lot of time to find your identity. Usually take some building. You don’t snap your fingers. You don’t do it overnight. The Jets didn’t do that. It took a little bit of building. They first got that first victory, then put their second together. And while there were holes in their games early on in that winning streak, by the end of it The Jets were starting to look impenetrable, especially with two massive wins against division rivals in the Dallas Stars and the Colorado Avalanche. Basically, when you’re hot, you’re hot and The Jets are supernova at the moment. Well, you know what? There’s no time better to be hot than going into the playoffs. So 2018, we all remember that deep Cup run with The Jets going into the third round. You said they’re hot potential now this year for a long Cup run. I would think so. And I mean, if you’re drawing parallels to that, 2018, The Jets again, that year went into the playoffs as the hottest team in the NHL. And I take a look at the run they went on that year. They knocked off the the National Predators in the second round of the playoffs, who were the President’s Trophy winning team. And a lot of people that year thought the National Predators would be the ones to go on to win the Stanley Cup. The Edmonton Oilers after their, excuse me, the Winnipeg Jets after they knocked them off, I believe thought that themselves, they were on their way to winning the Cup. I think there was that was a young inexperienced team and that inexperienced caught up with them that year. This is a team that’s learned its lessons. It’s looking just as dominant as that 2018 team did. This is far and away the best chance the Winnipeg Jets have had at making a seriously deep run in the playoffs maybe that we’ve ever seen from this team. Sean, we did have a couple tough years there. What big changes did you see in the team this year compared to these last few that we had? I I think it was just a mindset. I think it had a lot of it had to do with culture. Rick bonus when he came in and took over the team, that was to him, the priority was to change the culture of this team. When we’re talking about culture, I think there were times where they settled for a little bit less than they should have been settling for. They’d go on a win streak and then get, you know, maybe pat themselves on the back a little bit and kind of lose their eyes on the prize. Last year, the perfect example is they were one of the best teams in the NHL heading into mid January and then completely fell apart and almost had the biggest collapse that we’ve ever seen in NHL history. Had they fallen out of the playoffs this year? A team that seems a lot more aware of itself and aware of the things that it needs to do in order to be successful. We call that identity in sports. The Winnipeg Jets know exactly what their identity is. They need to play hard to achieve that identity and it’s a team that is completely and fully committed to achieving that identity. So we’re starting round one Jets taking on the 2022 Cup champs with the Avalanche. How have these two teams matched up so far this season? Yeah, if I’m a Colorado Avalanche fan, I don’t like the chances that not only is it the idea that the Winnipeg Jets have beat them three times in their three meetings this year and that The Jets outscored them, I believe the number is 17 to 4 in those three games. The Colorado Avalanche, in those games, I never saw a sign of what their game would look like to succeed against the Winnipeg Jets. You want to go in with an idea of this is what we need to be to be able to beat that team. I never saw a glimpse of what the Colorado Avalanche team would need to look like to beat the Winnipeg Jets. I don’t know that they have it in them. They’re an extremely top heavy team. Their goaltending isn’t great. The Winnipeg Jets have maybe the best shutdown line in the league in Adam Lowry’s line. So while Nathan McKinnon is the guy who can take over a series, Adam Lowry may be the toughest assignment in the NHL, which maybe he won’t shut him completely down, but he should limit his production in this series. And at that point, I just think The Jets depth takes over in this series. The The Jets depth just in my mind miles above where the Colorado Avalanche’s depth is. All right, game one Sunday. We will be watching. Thank you so much, Sean. Anytime. Appreciate it.