Jets lose Game 4, swept out of the postseason

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Why Not Us?"

The handwriting was nothing to admire on the dressing room board, but the sentiment was exactly right.

Why not? Hadn't the Los Angeles Kings done it just a year ago? Down three games to none against the San Jose Sharks in the opening round of the 2014 playoffs, the Kings had come back to win four straight and take the series, becoming only the fourth team in NHL history to manage such a seemingly insurmountable comeback.

The Kings then went on to win the Stanley Cup.

The Jets would not move on, eventually falling 5-2 to the Ducks and being swept four straight – but they did not go quietly, or without future promise.

The Winnipeg Jets were down three games to none entering Wednesday night's Game 4 against the Anaheim Ducks.

"A tough spot," Jets head coach Paul Maurice said after the morning skate.

Tough, but not impossible at that moment. And they would need their "fan advantage."

"We want to get this crowd as jacked up as possible," Maurice said. "And then use that energy."

They were certainly jacked. Drums in the streets, horns blasting, every one of the 15,004 seats with a whited-out human – sometimes an alien, a few zombies – twirling towels and screaming. Even the Prime Minister of Canada was in the stands waving a Mike Duffy's expense sheet. Well, Stephen Harper was there anyway, wearing a politically-and-locally-correct white Team Canada jersey.

The added energy paid off 16:28 into the opening period when, on a Jets power play (defenceman Andrew Cogliano off for tripping), Bryan Little was able to snap a hard shot over the glove of Ducks goaltender Frederik Andersen. The goal, not surprisingly, sent the crowd into a frenzy.

But then, as has so often been the cast this spring, the Ducks hit right back. Less than two minutes after Little's goal, Emerson Etem, a 22-year-old from the hockey hotbed of Long Beach, Calif., twisted through a falling Jets defence like a weasel in a woodpile and casually flipped a backhand into the top of the far corner of Ondrej Pavelec's net.

Halfway through a somewhat scruffy second period, the Jets were given a glorious opportunity to take the lead when given their second power play of the night, courtesy of a hooking penalty to Ducks forward Jakob Silfverberg.

The two minutes that followed could serve as valuable video on how not to run a power play. So inept were the Jets with their extra man on the ice that, for the first time, the MTS Centre went virtually silent.

Then, with both sides at full strength, the seemingly inevitable happened: Ducks forward Corey Perry, who has seven points in the four games, slipped a puck over to Cogliano, standing all alone to the side, and Cogliano easily beat Pavelec with a quick shot to the short side.

With the Ducks pressing in the second half of the period, Pavelec was sensational at times. The crowd enthusiastically chanted:

"Pav-eee! Pav-eee! Pav-eee!"

But Pavelec could not score the goals the Jets needed. Much less sensational was the Jets' power play, given two more chances in the second period and sputtering badly.

That left only the third period, so far the Jets' nemesis. They had led all three previous matches against the Ducks after two periods but could not hold a lead. The Ducks has outscored the Jets 6-0 in third-period play.

On the bright side – perhaps – at least this game the Jets weren't taking a lead into the third period….

"If we knew what the answer was," Little had said earlier in the day of the team's late-in-the-game struggles, "we would have figured it out by now.

"There's not much to say apart from just try to keep your foot on the gas."

"I think it's just a situation where we just need to relax a little bit more," offered young Drew Stafford. "It's almost we're thinking too much. When you over-analyze, you over-think out there. Your body kind of loses control. You kind of stand still, you stop skating."

That, however, had already happened several times in the second period.

Winnipeg played far better in the third, but at the 6:41 mark Simon Despres was sent in along on Pavelec. Pavelec made a brilliant pad stop but instantly Ryan Kesler – Anaheim's least-popular player in Winnipeg – was there to sweep in the rebound.

It was 3-1 in the third, and the Jets never having scored a third-period goal now needed four just to live to skate another day.

They got one at the halfway point when Mark Stuart blasted a shot from the point that seemed to hit something or someone and ricochet past Andersen.

But then, after a close call at Andersen's net, the Ducks broke up ice on a two-on-one with less than five minutes remaining and Kesler – who else? – fired a puck past Pavelec from the slot. Sami Vatanen added one in the empty Jets' net.

It was over, 5-2 Anaheim, 4-0 the series.

In the end, another question would serve better for the inexperienced but oh-so-promising Winnipeg Jets.

Why not next year?