ANALYSIS: Jets-Stars series has very different personality from 1st round
I have always been one to be guarded about making bold statements that profess 'the greatest' or 'the best.' In this day and age, in 2025, we are far too quick to use those monikers. It's called recency bias.
Sunday night's Game 7 heroics against the St. Louis Blues do not need any type of hyperbole. And quite frankly, nothing the Winnipeg Jets do from this point requires any level of exaggeration. It's just that special. This year feels special. The Blues and Jets were great. The best? Not so sure — but they were great.
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So here we are, in the next round. And yet, it just doesn't feel the same. Everyone could easily describe the Jets-Blues series in a few words. The tension, the excitement that built throughout the whole first-round series against the Blues will be hard to match, for a number of reasons.
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Firstly, the Stars don't grind the same way St. Louis did. I suspect we won't see a 100-hit game in this round like we did in the last round. And remember, the chaos throughout the Blues series took more than two weeks to build to a double-overtime crescendo.
But that's just not the case in this Stars-Jets series. At least not yet.
By the time Game 2 ends Friday night, we will start to see and feel that same drama that occurred five or six days into the last series. And when this Dallas-Winnipeg series returns to Canada Life Centre (and it will return) for Game 5, we will be right where we were after Game 5 against the Blues.
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Yes, the intensity, the anxiety, the drama will be in this series. It will just take time. And here's fair warning: if the Jets triumph and move on to the third round, we will go through the same circle of emotions one more time. Such is life in the Stanley Cup playoffs, where every series has its own personality. There is every chance that this round of games might be greater than the last series. Really. It is very possible.
We just haven't figured out what personality this series has yet. But don't worry — we will.
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