With all the injuries to the Florida Panthers; nine in all including Ed Jovanovski, Kris Versteeg, Jose Theodore and with Stephen Weiss out for the season, the deflated roster of the Cats, including eight of them called up from the American Hockey League, defeated the Winnipeg Jets 4-1 tonight in Sunrise, Florida.
This was perhaps the worst performance of the season by the Jets. Although there are no "easy wins" in the NHL, this was a game they should have won. As Coach Claude Noel said after the game, "nobody wanted to pay the price to win." It seems the Jets only want to pay the price when they want. It seems apparent that they are like the Jets of days gone by, by playing up or down to the level of their opponent. They are pumped for the elite teams like Pittsburgh, Boston and the NY Rangers and look lost and lazy against teams like Florida, Washington and Toronto, save for the last road trip that saw them go 4-1. But even against the elite teams, the Jets seem to only be ready for them at the MTS Centre. Except for this year, where the magic and intensity has been AWOL all season long.
You can get away with saying "wait and see" after the first 10 games of season, but now that we're just about at the halfway point of this shortened season, it's time for something drastic to be done.
I personally understand their plan of building this team through the draft, which will take about another four or five years, but ticket buyers deserve wins. They at the very least deserve a blue-collar effort every game.
