AS I SEE IT COLUMN: This is the only way the Jets can salvage their season

Things look really bleak for the Jets (thanks Captain Obvious). The players, the coaching staff, the organization, the media and the public simply cannot understand how a team that’s been so good the past few years now looks so disorganized, so disjointed, so outworked, so unskilled, so slow and so outclassed.

Heading into the current season, the Jets knew they probably wouldn’t be quite as good as they were when Nikolai Ehlers was on the team, but the club clearly and explicitly said they were singularly focused on winning the Stanley Cup.

One of the biggest reasons for their belief they would be contenders and not pretenders was that the team had four strong lines; that having the league’s most balanced team would carry them to the promised land.

With the season over a third done, that team balance is non-existent. The Jets have one line that can score and three lines that can’t. The idea of the Jets rolling out four lines and wearing down their opposition has completely evaporated.

Just a couple of years ago the Jets were the toast of the league. They were big, they were fast and they followed a disciplined structure that resulted in a lot of wins. It also didn’t hurt that the team had the best regular season goaltender in the league.

There is only one way this season can be salvaged and his name is Connor Hellebuyck. The only possible way the season can be rescued happens in two parts. One, he comes back from his knee surgery and wins enough games that the Jets qualify for the postseason. Two – and this imperative – he finally plays like an Art Ross (MVP) and Vezina (best regular season goaltender) winner in the playoffs and steals a series or two for the team. In other words, the season is only redeemable if the so-called “best goalie in the world” actually plays like the best goalie in the world when the games really count.

There is good news and bad news on this front.

The good news is that the Jets are only a few points out of a playoff spot, despite their horrid play. The bad news is they will need to leap frog a number of teams to get into the playoffs.

The good news is that not that long ago, the St. Louis Blues were the worst team in the NHL at the start of the new calendar year and they went on to win the Stanley Cup. The bad news is that if the Jets somehow manage to turn their embarrassing ship around, they will likely face the almost unbeatable Colorado Avalanche in the first round. It could be an epic disaster for the Jets if we see ‘playoff’ Hellebuyck and not ‘regular season’ Hellebuyck.

Sport can be so strange and so nasty.

Last season when the Jets played so valiantly hours after learning Mark Scheifele’s father had passed, it was thought that that contest was an era-defining game for the organization.

But fast forward to now, where the Jets are close to being the worst team in the league the year after being the best team in the league and there is the very real possibility of a new era-defining moment for the club, a complete and utter collapse of historic proportions.

A showing so abysmal, so inexplicable that it could damage the Jets organization for years.

Expecting something magical that will instantly turn this nightmare of a season around for the Jets is like Trump thinking he should win the Nobel Peace Prize when his military has had over 80 Venezuelan fishermen killed and has supplied Israel with weapons that have killed over 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza (56,000 of which are children and women).

It doesn’t make any sense.

For the Jets there is no magic pill. No quick fix. If they are going to reclaim their dignity and their identity and claw their way into the playoffs, it will only happen through hard work, blood, sweat and tears.