DALLAS — To get to the Winnipeg Jets’ dressing room at American Airlines Center after Tuesday night’s loss, reporters shared an elevator with Jets management, navigated through members of Winnipeg’s taxi squad, stepped past True North Sports & Entertainment chairman Mark Chipman, and turned down a narrow hallway, guided by Jets communications staff.

Nikolaj Ehlers and Connor Hellebuyck were waiting in the visitors’ room, ready to dissect Winnipeg’s ninth straight road playoff loss — a streak going back to Vegas in 2023. For Ehlers and Hellebuyck, and one can assume for Jets brass as well, it was difficult to explain how Winnipeg had lost a critical playoff game on the road.

Again.

“If I had the answer to why, we would have gotten (a win) at some point,” Ehlers said.

“This is pretty raw,” Hellebuyck said. “It’s playoffs and it’s been, I don’t know, maybe five minutes since the end of the game. Every loss is frustrating.”

Ehlers praised Winnipeg’s quality of play, but lamented the Jets’ inability to bury their scoring chances. Hellebuyck leaned into the idea that one positive bounce could dramatically change Winnipeg’s fortune in the series. The words were well felt. One can go through the game tape and find goals Winnipeg “should” have scored and saves Hellebuyck “should” have made.

But the part of this Jets story that matters most has yet to be written.

The odds are stacked against Winnipeg now. Teams down 3-1 have gone on to win 32 out of 352 NHL playoff series — a 9.1 percent success rate. The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn’s in-house model gives these Jets a 13 percent chance of completing the comeback — essentially the same odds as flipping a coin and getting heads three times in a row. Winnipeg’s odds would improve further if the Stars were a paper tiger, unworthy of their postseason success, but the Dallas Stars are an excellent hockey team only getting better.

This is a problem, but it’s clearly not up to the Jets to care about the odds of their success. It’s up to them to win a hockey game Thursday night in Winnipeg. Get that right in Winnipeg and then they can worry about Game 6 and their incomprehensible nine-game playoff losing streak on the road. Get that one — one — road game right and then there’s a Game 7 waiting on home ice.

So the Jets are on the brink of elimination. What would it take for them to win three games in a row and become the 33rd team in NHL history to come back from a 3-1 series deficit?

Connor Hellebuyck needs to lock in

Hellebuyck isn’t playing poorly in this series. He has a better save percentage at five-on-five (.918) than Jake Oettinger does (.913). The difference is made up shorthanded: Hellebuyck has been beaten on four of eight shots while Oettinger has stopped 23 out of 24.

A quick review of those goals:

Mikko Rantanen tries to pass but banks a goal in off of Dylan Samberg’s leg
Rantanen finds Roope Hintz in the center slot for a deflection just as a 5-on-3 power play ends
Mikael Granlund steps into the high slot and shoots through Neal Pionk
Matt Duchene hits the post, the Stars recover, Granlund buries a one-timer from a Miro Heiskanen pass

Blame Hellebuyck for one of those goals (as I do) or all four (as others have chosen to do). Take comfort in his five-on-five success or misery in his .884 save percentage across all situations. It doesn’t matter: Winnipeg cannot come back against Dallas without Hellebuyck outplaying Oettinger. The Jets’ odds of a miracle rely more heavily on their franchise goaltender than on any other player.

“I leave it all out there every night,” Hellebuyck said Tuesday. “I’m doing my best. Sometimes it’s a heartbreak, but all it takes is one little change, one little bounce and things can start going our way.”

The Jets’ top scorers need to meet the moment

“He’ll do his job,” said Arniel of Hellebuyck. “We’ve got to get him some run support. We’ve got to get him the lead, we’ve got to get out in front. Make this team chase us, instead of us chasing them like we have in the last couple of games.”

Winnipeg has the worst shooting percentage of any playoff team.

The lack of finishing, after posting the third-best shooting percentage during the regular season, is a surprise. It should be a surprise in the same way that Hellebuyck sliding from best in the NHL to the second-worst save percentage in the playoffs is a surprise, but we’ve spilled far more ink about the goaltender.

Game 4 was the first time the Jets won the expected goals battle at five-on-five in the series, but it wasn’t enough. Whether it was Gabriel Vilardi all alone in the slot three and a half minutes into the game or Kyle Connor, shorthanded, breaking in on Oettinger with the game-tying goal on his stick in the third period, Winnipeg’s finishers need to finish.

Started with a big save from Otter 🦦

Ended with a big goal from Granlund 🚨 pic.twitter.com/P7HpPY1mOO

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) May 14, 2025

“We had 70 shot attempts and scored one goal,” Arniel said after Game 4. “If we can’t find more than one goal, we’re not going to win hockey games, especially against this hockey team.”

The Jets’ power play is the source of most of the regression, with only one goal on 23 shots. The Anaheim Ducks had the worst power-play shooting percentage (8.2 percent) in the NHL this season. Winnipeg’s Round 2 percentage (4.2 percent) is roughly half as good.

The playoffs are about getting it done when the moment presents itself.

Connor is the Jets’ best finisher, scoring 41 goals in 82 games during the season and five more in 11 playoff games. If anyone can go on a finishing run so unsustainably good it turns around a series, it’s him, but Oettinger had Connor’s number in Game 4.

“It’s skill, work, and the habits you create,” Connor told The Athletic on Tuesday. “It’s the reps you take in practice over the summer to be familiar with any situation that you get to be able to score.”

No more implosions: Careless penalties count, too

The Jets took the fourth-fewest penalties in the league this season. They’ve taken more than any other team in the playoffs. Some of their problems are self-inflicted.

Granlund had been on the ice for over a minute when Dylan DeMelo took a penalty for holding his stick in Game 4. He wasn’t a likely threat to score off the rush at that moment, although Granlund did exactly that on the ensuing power play.

There was also the matter of Haydn Fleury’s accidental high-sticking penalty — the four-minute double-minor that led to Granlund’s hat-trick goal. Or Nino Niederreiter’s high stick to start Game 3, followed by Josh Morrissey’s tripping penalty to make it a five-on-three.

The Stars take enough of their success into their own hands. They don’t need Winnipeg’s help. And the problem with going down 3-1 in a series is that a team runs out of outs. If the Stars score a controversial goal or the referees make a horrid penalty call on Thursday, the Jets will have to deal with it and move on, or call it a season.

The Jets’ secondary scorers need to meet the moment, too

Winnipeg is supposed to be able to count on its elite goaltender, its dynamic power play, and its depth scorers. Look at the Jets’ Game 2 win for a great example: Hellebuyck got a shutout, Vilardi got a power-play goal and Adam Lowry scored, too.

The Jets are down 3-1 in part because the secondary scoring has gone cold.

Nikolaj Ehlers leads all Jets with three goals and one assist in four games against the Stars. Niederreiter, Josh Morrissey and Gabriel Vilardi are tied with three points each.

Then it’s Connor, Scheifele, Dylan DeMelo, and Haydn Fleury at two points each. No one on the fourth line has picked up a point this series, nor have Cole Perfetti or Vladislav Namestnikov. The Jets have no chance to come back in this series if Connor and Scheifele can’t separate themselves from DeMelo and Fleury on that list — and it would help if Perfetti or Namestnikov scored or somebody bounced a goal in off a Stars’ player’s skate.

Magic. The Jets need magic.

The odds of a Winnipeg Jets comeback are minuscule. Realistically, there’s no series win without multiple things going right — great goaltending, more control of play, great finishing and fewer careless penalties.

If, somehow, the Jets pull this off, they will need all of those things and good fortune, too. Maybe a Stars player will have to make an egregious mistake. Maybe Oettinger comes crashing back down to earth.

“We’re going to have to go home and win the next one so we come back here (to Dallas),” Arniel said. “We’ve got to get the job done, focus in on this next game. Game 5. That’s what it’s all about. Work to make sure that we get ourselves back here to Dallas for a Game 6.”

Go through the 32 of 352 teams that have pulled off a win like this before — most recently, the 2023 Florida Panthers in the first round against the Boston Bruins — and you’ll find a Matthew Tkachuk superstar turn, a sudden offensive explosion from Carter Verhaeghe, and luck. Lots of luck. The Panthers scored 15 times in three games and won two of them in overtime, including Game 7, which they tied with a minute to go in the third period. Historic comebacks go hand in hand with historic collapses.

The Stars are not built to falter. Our post-deadline look at the Central Division gave Dallas the edge in the Central Division playoffs. Still, Winnipeg meets a crucial criterion for pulling off the unthinkable. Despite their 3-1 deficit and the angst that comes with it, the Jets are a legitimately good team.

It’s a start, but only a start. The rest is up to them.

(Data via Hockey Reference and Natural Stat Trick)

(Photo: Sam Hodde / Getty Images)