ANALYSIS: Jets loss may have come at perfect time on schedule – Winnipeg

Monday’s game against the Boston Bruins came at a good time for the Winnipeg Jets — not the loss, of course, but the meeting itself for Winnipeg against one of the preeminent teams in the entire NHL.

Since 2011, the Bruins have won a Stanley Cup, advanced to the final twice more and captured the President’s Trophy three times, including last year when their 65 wins and 135 points established new league records.

Now, the President’s Trophy does have its own stigma as a cursed award when it comes to the correlation to winning the Stanley Cup, but what it does represent in its purest form is elite achievement.

In saying that, the Bruins are a formidable franchise and a beacon of success, traits that have followed them for more than a decade. Having the Jets roll into Boston with both teams chasing first place overall in the league presented an opportunity for Winnipeg to further assess their quest as one of the league’s best teams.

And while the result was a three-goal loss, the game’s timeliness left the Jets with a stark lesson on what it takes to be successful every night, especially since their ascension to the league’s upper crust is uncharted territory for the 13-year franchise.

By their own admission, Monday’s game was not Winnipeg’s best. In fact, their coach felt it might have been one of their worst in quite some time, but it will likely serve a greater purpose than simply missing out on two points as the season continues to progress.

Simply put, it was a jolt, an awakening and a vivid reality check for a team still building experience and notoriety as it finds itself among the league’s top outfits. And it was a further precursor for what we might possibly expect Wednesday night and Saturday in a pair of games against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Of course, a loss is never timely, but Mondays’ game against the Bruins might have come at the perfect time on the schedule for the Jets: a reminder, in fact, that preeminence rarely takes a night off.

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