It’s safe to say that Rick Bowness was not happy with his team’s performance in the playoffs.
The Winnipeg Jets head coach spared no one during his post-game press conference after the Jets' Game 5 elimination to the Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday night.
“I’m so disappointed and disgusted right now,” said Bowness in the leadoff of the press conference.
Bowness was well within reason to think that, as the Jets had a poor showing in their final game of the season. The Golden Knights stormed out to a 4-0 lead in Game 5, with the Jets only getting one goal back in a 4-1 loss that saw them get eliminated.
The problem, according to Bowness, was no pushback.
“We gotta push back. There’s gotta be pushback, there’s gotta be pride,” said Bowness. “You gotta be able to push back when things aren’t going your way. We had no pushback.”
The Jets got off to a good start in the series, beating Vegas 5-1 in Game 1, but that was the closest Winnipeg would get to a series win, with the Golden Knights winning the next four games to take the series, with two coming by three-goal deficits. The closest the Jets got to another win was their 5-4 double overtime loss in Game 3, which saw them come back from a 4-1 deficit in the third period.
But according to Bowness, this problem extends far beyond this series.
“It’s the same crap we saw in February, it was,” he said. “As soon as we were challenged for first place and teams were coming after us, we had no pushback. This series, we had no pushback.”
The Jets saw themselves off to a great start, with a 29-14-1 record by January 15th and challenging for the top spot in the Central Division, or at least looking to be in good shape to have a top three spot. They proceeded to go 17-19-2 for the final 38 games of the season and barely make the playoffs, leaving it to the final week to clinch a spot and take the final wild card spot.
“Their better players were so much better than ours tonight, they deserved to win,” said Bowness. “They were the better team in the regular season, they were the better team this series.”
The Golden Knights won the Pacific Division and the Western Conference with a 51-22-9 record. With their series win over the Jets, they advance to the second round for the fourth time in the franchise’s six-year history.
The Jets now head into the offseason with some interesting decisions to make. While the main core is locked up for next year outside of Pierre-Luc Dubois being a restricted free agent, they may still look to shake up the group, especially with Dubois not-so-secretly eyeing playing for the Montreal Canadiens, as well as Mark Scheifele, Connor Hellebuyck, and Blake Wheeler all entering the final years of their contracts in 2023-24.
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