There was no obvious sign of an elephant in the Winnipeg Jets dressing room after their series-opening win over the St. Louis Blues on Saturday night.
No visible tracks on the carpet in their room at the practice rink just outside the Perimeter Highway on Sunday, either.
Leave it to the media to bring up the wrinkled skin and foul smell from the last two playoff seasons.
The reminder: Game 1 victories for this team – against Colorado last year, Vegas the year before that – have been about as useful as tusks on a rhinoceros.
“I don’t talk about that, the last two playoff years,” head coach Scott Arniel said. “Because this is a different animal, a different year. But we have talked about all season long, the next game. We’ve done a real good job this year of focusing on what’s coming next.
“And that next game is what we’re zooming in on.”
Game 2 on Monday takes on added meaning, though, when you dare look back. Not only has this team not built on series-opening wins, it’s crumbled, losing the next one and the three after that.
What was encouraging about Saturday’s win was how the Jets shook off a pair of deficits and found the lock-down game that’s been their bread and butter in the third period.
It took a while to get there, but at least they did. Unlike last year, when they gave up five or six goals to the Avalanche in every game.
Of course, these Blues aren’t last year’s Avs, who were the highest-scoring team in the NHL. St. Louis still scored three times in the first 21 minutes or so of Game 1, perhaps causing some to wonder if this was going to be another post-season relapse.
“We didn’t really have any panic,” defenceman Dylan Samberg said. “We’re comfortable. We’ve had games like that this year that we’ve ended up winning, even if it came down to the last minute, last 30 seconds. So there was no panic in the room.”
Forward Alex Iafallo put it another way.
“Our resilience,” he said. “We talked about it all year.”
