Scott Arniel isn’t spending much time worrying about whether his own seat is getting hot.
After the Winnipeg Jets were beaten 7-0 by the Carolina Hurricanes on Sunday, extending their losing streak to nine games, the head coach said his job security is not something he’s dwelling on. The loss was another brutal night for a team that hasn’t won since Oct. 13, when it beat the Minnesota Wild, and has now been outscored 37-16 during the skid.
“It’s not on my mind,” Arniel said postgame. “I’m not worrying about (it).
I’ve been in this game a long, long time, and that’s beyond my control. My job is to get these players ready to go.
I gotta just keep doing my job, because I’m telling them to keep doing their jobs.”
Arniel called the defeat “pretty embarrassing as an organization,” but he also made clear that he sees the issue as bigger than any one person. Winnipeg is now 4-8-3 and sits seventh in the Central Division.
Captain Adam Lowry didn’t sugarcoat where things stand, either. He said he expects changes if the losing keeps piling up.
“If it goes on, there’s gonna be changes for sure,” Lowry said. “If you don’t start winning, you gotta find the answers somewhere. ... As players, our job is to go out and execute the game plan, but we gotta execute it.”
The Hurricanes buried the Jets with four goals in the second period, turning what had started as a manageable game into another lopsided result. Lowry said the pattern has become painfully familiar.
“It’s just not good enough,” Lowry said. “We come out, we have decent starts. ...
We go into the locker room (down) 1-0 against a very good team, and then we come out and we give up two right away, and the wheels fall off. That’s kind of been the story of the streak.
We’ve hung our goalies out to dry. Everything facet of the game hasn’t been good enough for us.”
He said there have been stretches where the Jets have liked how they’ve played, but not enough of them.
“There’s been spurts of where we’ve liked what our game looks like, but you can’t play 15, 20 minutes in this league. Teams are too good. You gotta put together a full 60 minutes - or as close to (it) as you can - to give yourself a chance to win, and we haven’t been doing that.”
When Arniel was asked whether the players are still buying into the message, he didn’t give a direct answer.
“That’s your decision to make on that call,” Arniel said. “For me, I’m doing everything I possibly can with my coaching staff to hopefully get these guys ready to go. But once the puck drops and once it’s on the other side of the ice, on the boards there, these guys have to also take some responsibility as well.”
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Jets Hit A New Low As This Losing Streak Gets Harder To Explain
The skid keeps getting uglier for the Jets, and Fridays 7-0 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes felt like another night where little went right from the opening shift. Winnipeg is now winless in nine straight, and the pattern has become impossible to ignore: the Jets have given up the first goal in 11 of their last 13 games, a habit that keeps forcing them to chase instead of control the pace.
The Hurricanes pushed the game out of reach early, and Winnipeg spent most of the night on its heels while getting badly outshot. Cole Koepke was unavailable because of an injury-related issue, adding another wrinkle to a lineup already searching for answers, but the larger concern is the way the losses are piling up and the lack of resistance once the game starts slipping away. [Read more 🡒]
Jets Hit A Defining Week As Early Slide Starts To Feel Serious
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A road trip now offers a chance to change the tone, but it also brings a difficult test right away with a visit to the defending Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes. For a team trying to stop an early slide from turning into something more serious, the next stretch is about more than just points in the standings. It is about finding enough structure and depth to survive until the lineup starts to look whole again. [Read more 🡒]
Jets Face Growing Questions As Familiar Names Enter The Spotlight
The Jets head into a meeting with the defending Stanley Cup champion Hurricanes still trying to steady themselves after back-to-back losses in Florida, and the conversation around the club has not exactly quieted down. While the big club sorts through its own issues, a couple of familiar names in the system offered some brighter news: goalie Samuel Hrenk kept rolling with his eighth straight win for Fargo, and Sascha Boumedienne found the net for the first time at Ohio State.
Even so, the bigger picture around Winnipeg keeps circling back to roster uncertainty and the kind of outside chatter that tends to follow a team when results wobble. Sportsnets 32 Thoughts added to that backdrop by digging into possible movement and contract-related questions around key Jets pieces, leaving the sense that the next stretch could say a lot about where this group is headed and which names stay at the center of it. [Read more 🡒]