Jets Post Mortem Part 1
The lockers are cleared out, the remaining merchandise is signed and the final questions from the media have been answered and players are moving along. Some will go on to Europe for the World Championships and others will go to their off-season homes but most will take a break a reflect.
While some would take the final words of the coach and GM as a step forward for the team and organization there may be reason to be cautious, or at the very least some cautious optimism.
The Jets are not a complete team, that was made clear to all by the Anaheim Ducks, and if you are one who believes that 8 injured players are the difference what about the ones that weren’t injured? How did they measure up?
Part of dissecting the aftermath of the post season should be to recognize where the team was predicted to be, where the organization believed it would be and where it and how it finished. The latter part seems to be a critical piece of the puzzle that Jets GM must solve going forward this off-season.
The Jets finished the regular season in 8th place in the west and only Pittsburgh and Calgary finished with less points and made the playoffs. However the Jets were the only team to fail to win a game in the post-season and they could not keep the Ducks from taking the lead from them in each game. Frustrated, tired, injured and outplayed is how they finished and one has to honestly consider if that reality was avoidable no matter who the Jets faced.
The difference between the post season and the finish to the regular season for some players was spectacular and no more so for Ondrej Pavelec who ended with three consecutive shutouts against the Wild, Blues and Avs (in that order) to then post a .891 save percentage and a 3.73 GAA. The Jets essentially got what they have had for the better part of 4 seasons from Pavelec- sub-par and sub replacement level goaltending.
The Jets goal scoring also dried up too, as they went from averaging 2.8 goals per game to 2, a drop in output of nearly 33%. To put that into perspective had the Jets played a full season at reduced rate of 33% when scoring goals they would have scored as many as Buffalo did the entire season, or 70 less than they actually did.
The Ducks, in comparison, averaged 4 goals per game scored compared to 2.87 in the regular season and Andersen went from .914 and 2.38 to .924 and 2.2 in the playoffs.
Make sense of that if you are the Jets GM, your team either was grossly under-equipped, under-prepared, or under-manned and perhaps all three. So how does Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff go about fixing the inadequacies?
It’s a three stage approach in some ways:
Assessment
Retention and release
Acquisition and development
Assessment
The damage is known and outlined above, that is the ‘how’ part of the issue. If you have read this space you will know I use the logic/process of ‘who and how’. The axiom I abide by is this: “how will always lead to who, but who does not always lead to how”. This is my antidote to the tendency of people to ineffectively ‘blame-storm’, the process of figuring who was at fault and holding them accountable but not understanding or identifying the actual problem. If it was always due to a player or coach then the Leafs, Oilers and Sharks would all have much greater success right?
To assess the damage perhaps one should look at the game’s event data, the possession data, and compare those to historical information. Did the goaltending play out to what this season was or what has been the typical in past seasons? Were some players not ready or prepared for the post season style of game, one that is harder, tighter, and less forgiving of mistakes? Were the tactics not executed correctly or were they incorrect? Were their other factors affecting the team that are not observable or measurable to the common eye?
How significant were injuries on the outcome of play? Take the captain, Andrew Ladd, and his sports hernia one believed to have been affecting him for 2 months. 20 of Ladd’s 62 points came in the final 2 months of a roughly 6 month long season. Did the hernia affect his scoring or his ability to play a complete game, 200 feet up and down the ice?
If the team was not prepared for the post season why was that? The coach, the attitude, the strategy or something else? Some might question whether judging the 4 games played against Anaheim is worth looking at due to such a small sample size and then counter by looking at the regular season. The Jets had just as much chance to not make the post season as they did to make it. What if goaltending had been the .891 seen versus Anaheim instead of what was done the final four games?
Instead of 7 points the Jets got 3 and in that case LA is in and Winnipeg is out is there a different approach to the assessment?
Is it time to use SWOT analysis?
Look at the above graph and place the following on it- what does it look like?
Youth
Free Agents
Competition
Age
Depth
Forwards
Defense
Prospects
Goaltending
Coaching
Draft picks
Salary Cap
Future Internal Free Agents
Here’s what I see
Debating the positioning and ranking of various issues as I have placed them look at it from a bigger picture, do the Jets look better now or in the future on your chart? If you are like many who I have spoken too your view on the team is probably cautious optimism for the Jets. You see there is opportunity but the strengths are as strong as you thought and the weaknesses might be a bit clearer but neither of which are unfixable situations.
This leads to the next part of the Post Mortem, Retentions and Release, and the SWOT analysis can be discussed in more specifics at that time.
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