Out of respect I do ask that you pause for a moment of silence for the last Canadian team to have a chance to win the Stanley Cup.
My favourite team the Winnipeg Jets had an outstanding season, but ultimately are just one of 30 losers in terms of achieving the ultimate goal among National Hockey League teams; winning Lord Stanley’s famed cup.
What I have to say is less the loss in the semi-final, but the how they lost, and to whom they fell.
In some respects the Jets losing in four straight has to be looked at as a major stumble, if not an outright choke. They won the series opener and then had nothing go right.
The Jets got big points out of Blake Wheeler 18 assists best in playoffs as of Monday, Mark Scheifele, 16 goals best in goals, and Dustin Byfuglien, but the rest of the team didn’t pop the timely secondary scoring you need at times to succeed.
It exasperated the problem as the Jets powerplay was rather woeful in the series.
Connor Hellebuyck played solid, but his shaky handling of the puck behind the net blossomed as a major weakness that cost goals.
Vegas, to their credit, pounced on every Jets mistake, and there were a number of them, turning them into goals on too many occasions.
And with Hellebuyck was good, Marc-Andre Fleury was outstanding, with a playoff goals against average now at 1.68. In the playoffs the importance of goaltending is magnified.
In the end a great Jets season ended on a definite sour note.
But at least I am now free to disc golf and fish, and enjoy the nice weather, since the playoffs for me are over.
I won’t be watching the final, and really don’t much care who wins.
That said, I am sure NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is hoping for a Vegas win.
There will be a definite media bump from this in the U.S. where hockey is still generally a distant fourth among pro sports, and soon to fall back of Major League Soccer. An expansion team in a final will be seen as one of those weird and whacky anomalies that media loves. Strange sells, and this is a very strange occurrence.
From a league perspective, give Bettman credit he made sure that Vegas was going to be solid, helping hire early staff, and giving a deeper pool of talent to pick from.
The NHL needed Vegas to be more than another expansion team chew toy for the established opposition. Bettman dreams of further expansion, not Quebec City that was a snow job promise on his anti-Canadian team part, but certainly Seattle, Houston and beyond (bet Kansas City resurfaces for one).
The $600 million-plus per team goes to bolster the pocketbooks for owners in money-losing markets to prop up Bettman’s empire, and it is money exempt from revenue-sharing with players.
Of course players are fine with expansion as it creates new jobs.
The question is, what message does the Vegas success mean, in part orchestrated by the NHL from day-one, to existing teams and their fans.
How do the St. Louis Blues appease fans who haven’t been to a Stanley Cup final in decades? Or in Vancouver? Buffalo?
And if Vegas wins it all the questions expand to fans in a dozen cities where teams have never won a cup.
As for me, my attention will be on the Saskatchewan Rush in the National Lacrosse League crown, the start-up of the Saskatchewan Roughriders and not the NHL final.
