The Winnipeg Jets were devastated when they gave up the puck and the lead and lost to the Ottawa Senators. Their fans were devastated when Winnipeg couldn’t impose itself against the St. Louis Blues to the point of scoring a single goal.

But Friday night’s loss to the Colorado Avalanche, as close as it was, drives home a different point.

The Avalanche are all of the things Winnipeg is not. They have a superstar, best-in-class forward talent in the form of Nathan MacKinnon. They have an even better version of Josh Morrissey in Cale Makar. They’re also deep in the way that Stanley Cup favourites are deep, with 15 skaters who’d be inside the Jets’ top 10 scorers’ list, and fast in a way the Jets simply cannot match. Colorado is also the Jets’ most likely first-round opponent, if the Jets dare to dream of making it that far.

So Friday night’s game served as a loud, searing, “Go on a run if you can. Make the playoffs. We dare you.”

For many Jets fans, the loss will feel like the final straw — of cold realities settling in. Winnipeg is on track to become the fourth team in NHL history to miss the playoffs after winning the Presidents’ Trophy. Winnipeg’s offseason bets on Jonathan Toews, Gustav Nyquist and Tanner Pearson, among others — along with last season’s deadline day bet on Luke Schenn — aren’t paying off. It is as if the Jets sized themselves up, gambled that they were Stanley Cup contenders who only needed experience to get over the top, and found they were wrong on all fronts.

So it makes sense to go scorched earth. It makes sense to sell off every pending UFA — Toews, Nyquist, Pearson, Cole Koepke, Logan Stanley, Colin Miller and Eric Comrie — who’d return any amount of NHL Draft capital. Next year’s UFAs shouldn’t be off-limits, either, if contending teams are willing to pay the right prices for Nino Niederreiter, Vladislav Namestnikov, Haydn Fleury or even Morgan Barron. The draft capital can be collected, combined and sent out the door when the Jets are ready to make good decisions about who might help their “win now” team.

But this is not a scorched-earth column.

This is an analysis of where the Jets currently sit, the long odds that face them, and how they might dig themselves out of the hole they’re in.

As I see it, Winnipeg is more likely to waste excellent seasons by Connor Hellebuyck, Mark Scheifele, Kyle Connor and Josh Morrissey than it is to arrive in the postseason with a realistic chance to contend for the Cup. I don’t even think the Jets are a playoff team. It’s a bad sign that they’re 5 points out of a playoff spot, for one, and it’s tough to imagine a team where only one line scores going on the tear it needs to close that gap. Getting clear of the Calgary Flames, Chicago Blackhawks, Utah Mammoth, San Jose Sharks and St. Louis is a daunting concept — admittedly more due to the number than the quality of teams involved — and beating Colorado in Round 1 seems next to impossible.

So, why not set fire to the whole thing?

The short answer is that there’s plenty of time for the Jets to cut ties with their playoff hopes, lean into the quality of the No. 6 draft pick and call it a wasted season. It might not feel like it, but there are 2 1/2 months until the trade deadline. This gives Winnipeg an opportunity — if not to turn itself into an outright contender, then to ride out January and see if Hellebuyck can drag them to striking distance of a wild-card spot. It might not feel like it, given the Jets’ 3-10-2 record in their last 15 games — especially if you’re the type to promote hard tanking — but there are good reasons for Winnipeg to keep pushing for wins in January.

The Jets have a good top line and a bad bottom nine, two good defence pairs and one frequently dragged down by Luke Schenn, and Hellebuyck in net. It makes sense for them to go after a mid-tier veteran — Mason Marchment was briefly one example, as Elliotte Friedman suggested Friday before Marchment got traded — this far in advance of the trade deadline.

In fact, there are several reasons, many of which are designed to help the Jets get more out of next season’s Connor, Scheifele, Morrissey and Hellebuyck.

1. Winnipeg must try to save its season and not send out a first-round pick

The Jets haven’t drafted inside the top 10 since a lottery win led to Patrik Laine in 2016. Cole Perfetti, taken with the No. 10 pick in 2020, has the 10th-most points in his draft class, but he’s one of just three Jets picks from the last 10 drafts on Winnipeg’s roster right now.

Meanwhile, the Jets head toward this year’s draft without a second-round pick (part of the cost of acquiring Schenn) or a fourth-round pick (the cost of acquiring Colin Miller). Scott Wheeler writes that this year’s draft class is “headlined by Canadian NCAA exports Gavin McKenna and Keaton Verhoeff, Swedish winger Ivar Stenberg, hulking Windsor Spitfires winger Ethan Belchetz, Muskegon Lumberjacks center Tynan Lawrence and a quintet of high-end CHL defensemen.”

It would be a shame for Winnipeg to sacrifice such a player chasing a first-round loss at the hands of Friday night’s Avalanche. It would be a different kind of shame for it to call itself a win-now team and then sit on its hands as the season appears to slip away. Mid-tier veterans such as Marchment are getting moved, and he won’t be the only one. I think it’s that kind of trade — for a faster, middle-six player — that could help the Jets now. It would be the type of trade a team that believes in itself makes to show its players it has their backs, while protecting the few Grade-A trade assets it still has in stock.

More on “message sending” in a moment.

2. Striking early buys time, but the Jets can still sell

There’s a new rule this season, where 75 days must pass between the first and second time a player is moved with salary retention: Friday was the last day a player could be traded with retained salary and be traded with salary retention a second time at the trade deadline. The Jets can no longer make any new acquisition at one-quarter of his cap hit come deadline day.

But they can still sell.

Moving early to find just one more player who might impose himself on a game doesn’t freeze Winnipeg’s roster in place. That’s a point a lot of people miss. The organization claims to be a win-now team. It’s not winning now, so it makes sense to make moves to help that cause, especially after selling Connor, Scheifele, Hellebuyck and others on the idea that Winnipeg has a window to compete for the Stanley Cup.

What doesn’t make sense is committing to those moves if January and February don’t change the Jets’ playoff trajectory.

Remember that a Cup-contending Jets team sized up last year’s trade market and decided to acquire Schenn for a second- and fourth-round pick, and Brandon Tanev for a second-round pick. Clearly, there are some circumstances in which playoff-bound teams find it appealing to move draft capital for veteran depth in the name of a playoff push. Winnipeg would be well within its rights to acquire a mid-tier player in the Marchment vein, watch for signs it has sparked the roster, then move him again at the deadline.

The Jets have Schenn’s Cup-winning experience to shop; Nyquist, who fetched a second-round pick at last year’s deadline; Pearson, who has won a Stanley Cup; and Toews — the three-time Cup-winning veteran who they’ve sold as a playoff-capable addition — to shop for draft capital.

It behooves the Jets to make moves to save their season — if they’re willing to make the right decisions on deadline day. If Hellebuyck goes on a tear, the Jets find a spark and the wild-card spot looks like it’s theirs to win, then the Jets will have earned the right to keep their own pending UFAs. If the Jets continue to fall short — and remember that they have 2 1/2 months, including 27 games, to change that trajectory — then they must have the courage to move their failed bets for assets that can help future editions of their win-now hockey club.

I’m influenced by the Washington Capitals here, after a lengthy, far-ranging conversation with Capitals general manager Chris Patrick. The Capitals showed courage in committing to their 2023 playoffs miss, acquiring a first-, second- and third-round pick for Dmitry Orlov and Garnet Hathaway, then adding a third-round pick for Marcus Johansson. Follow the trade trees down the line, and Washington avoided a rebuild: A third-round pick was the cost to acquire No. 1 goalie Logan Thompson, and a different third-round pick was packaged with Nick Jensen to acquire top-pairing defenceman Jakob Chychrun.

Winnipeg has sent so many picks out the door at recent deadlines that it can’t make those kinds of trades. If this truly isn’t the year, it must be willing to act on that — not because extra draft capital helps next year’s Cup attempt, but because it can be packaged and moved for players who do. Taking an early swing wouldn’t change that. It could be a net gain if the Jets were willing to retain salary while moving that same player on deadline day.

But they have to show their players they’re willing to try first.

3. Giving Winnipeg’s players a boost — while keeping a first-round pick — fights apathy

All of this asset talk distracts from the fact that hockey is a game played by real people with real emotion.

So put yourself in Connor’s, Scheifele’s or Gabriel Vilardi’s shoes. You’re among the only players producing right now. You’re among the only players who can impose their will upon a game. When head coach Scott Arniel comes after you for shift length and points to a shift wherein you gave up eight scoring chances — then plays you nearly 25 minutes in the same game — aren’t you going to feel wholly justified in stretching shift lengths, chasing offence and exhausting yourself in search of goals? Wouldn’t you be justified in that, even if it leads to bad habits, because you’re the only forwards producing any offence at all? Imagine you’re any of the Jets who are not scoring — outmatched but giving your best effort in a losing cause.

Arniel has one “break glass in case of emergency” move he hasn’t tried in earnest: splitting Connor and Scheifele in the hope it gets two lines going instead of one. Whether or not it helps the team win — remember, we’re talking about a 3-10-2 record in Winnipeg’s last 15 games — Arniel needs to break up his golden duo. Whatever it feels like, even after Colorado, this season hasn’t gone off the rails until players start going off on their own program. The Jets need to spread the limited wealth they do have on the roster, lest double standards emerge.

We saw that version of this team once. It was toward the end of Paul Maurice’s tenure. Let’s be clear: Arniel isn’t going anywhere, and his debut season was Winnipeg’s best ever. But hockey players are people, just like their fans. They need to be sold on winning or on a clear path to improvement, and the consequences of a wasted season could stretch well beyond 2025-26.

Winnipeg needs to act with courage and conviction — soon, and again at the deadline if its trajectory remains unchanged. Some as-of-yet unseen creativity would also do a world of good. Otherwise, Winnipeg will do more than waste brilliant seasons from core players. It will waste the window it sold them on to get them to stay.