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Seven days and four victories later, the temperature around the Winnipeg Jets has been lowered by a few degrees.
Wins against Los Angeles, New Jersey, the New York Islanders and now Minnesota have allowed the team to regain a bit of its swagger.
Perhaps the season isn’t lost. Perhaps all that talk about the Avalanche, Stars and Wild being the cream of the crop in the Central (with the Jets an afterthought) will die down for a while.
It would be easy to point to Thursday night’s raucous victory in St. Paul as a turning point of this strange season, but that might be premature. Indications are positive for the Jets, but there is still some work to be done.
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Winnipeg now has 43 points in 46 games. It’s actually hard to imagine that they only have 36 games remaining in the regular season. The consensus among hockey people is that it will take 92 points to get a wild-card spot in the post-season. That means the Jets have to win 25 of their last 36 games, and jump over five other teams, to get to the post-season. They are three games under NHL .500; they have to go 14 games over .500 the rest of the way.
Doable? Yes. Difficult? For sure.
It appears that many of the strengths that this team possessed last season and had disappeared during the losing streak have returned: depth scoring, solid special teams, 200-foot hockey and contributions from throughout the lineup.
They’ve also had Vezina-calibre goaltending from Connor Hellebuyck, the surprising season of Logan Stanley continues and Jonathan Toews — who has weathered the storm of an inconsistent return to the NHL to become that second-line centre many assumed he would become.
Now that winning feeling of four games has to turn into four more games, and four more after that, for the post-season to be a reality. They can’t afford any letdown the rest of the way.
You just hope it’s not too late.
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
