With four games to go in the NHL season, the Winnipeg Jets have an opportunity to set a new league record — albeit one no player, coach or front-office official would ever want on their resume.
If the Jets miss the playoffs, this team will be credited with the worst regular-season choke in NHL history.
That’s not an opinion. Prior to this season, no team has ever led a conference more than halfway through a season and still ended up missing the playoffs at the end.
Winnipeg is in danger of becoming the first to engage in such a spectacular late-season collapse.
“In mid-January, the Jets were in first place in the conference. The idea that this was possible is unthinkable,” said Sportsnet reporter Sean Reynolds.
Winnipeg last occupied first place in the Western Conference on Jan. 22, when the team had a 31-16-1 record after 48 games.
Two and a half months later, Winnipeg sits in eighth place in the west, tied in points with the Calgary Flames, who beat the Jets Wednesday in what was regarded as a must-win game for both clubs.
Although the Jets still have a game in hand compared to the Flames, a Winnipeg team considered a Stanley Cup favourite only three months ago now faces the very real possibility of missing the playoffs altogether.
“It’s not surprising as much as it would be shocking just to see, especially since it’s an NHL first,” said Scott Billeck, who covers the Jets for the Winnipeg Sun.
The real question for sportswriters, fans and potentially even the team itself is how this situation came to be.
Improbable collapse
If Winnipeg misses the playoffs after a strong performance during the first 60 per cent of the season, it would not just constitute a record-setting collapse. It would also be highly improbable from a statistical perspective.
“There’s only about a four per cent chance of them doing as badly as they have done,” Peter Tanner, founder of probability tracker Moneypuck.com, said in an interview from Toronto.
In mid-January, there was only a two-per-cent chance of blowing the season altogether. At the time, Moneypuck gave the Jets a 98-per-cent chance of making the playoffs, with a first-place finish the most likely outcome.
According to Tanner’s statistical model, part of the Jets’ change of fortune is due to bad luck on offence, as the club has scored…
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