ANAHEIM — It’s not unusual for Scott Arniel to check in with his players, whether in group meetings or one at a time, in an effort to hold them to their own high standards. It is unusual for Arniel to hold 24 one-on-one meetings in a single day to address the drop-off in the Jets’ quality of play.

“We straight up had one-on-ones with players,” Arniel said in Anaheim on Saturday. “Because we have a large number of new guys and we’re teaching them as we go, we’ve never really gotten a chance since training camp to say ‘OK, now this is what I expect from you,’ or review with our players that have been here. Touching on things that I expect from them every night.”

Those expectations? Better puck management, more commitment to winning battles, and faster transition play.

All three of those standards were unraveled just a few minutes into the Jets’ efforts to vindicate themselves against Anaheim on Sunday night. The Ducks outpaced Winnipeg in the middle of the ice, generating turnovers and odd man rushes, even when the Jets were on the power play, while winning battles in front of the net and along the  boards.

Anaheim opened the scoring seven minutes in, turning a two-on-one rush into extended time in Winnipeg’s zone. They chained several passes together, creating space against Winnipeg’s top line and top defence pair, and won multiple races to loose pucks. By the time Beckett Sennecke buried Cutter Gauthier’s centering feed, he was 10 feet clear of Mark Scheifele who tried to defend him from the Jets crease. Sennecke had started the goal scoring cycle by fighting off Josh Morrissey, with Scheifele trying to help, and making a kick pass to Mason McTavish.

It was everything Arniel had tried to address, encapsulated in a single goal against Winnipeg’s top players. The Jets’ top line had outscored its opponents 12-7 and put the team on its back with key offensive performances prior to Sunday night’s game — and Kyle Connor got the Jets’ lone goal, registering his 600th career point to make it 2-1 in the second — but they were burned again on the Ducks’ third goal of the game.

This Ducks goal was scored goal 41 seconds after a faceoff in Anaheim’s zone, which itself came following a TV timeout. The Jets had been building momentum, chaining together offensive zone shifts with Nino Niederreiter and Alex Iafallo getting the best chances, and Arniel sent out his big guns to take the offensive zone draw.

🚨 Sennecke X 2 🚨

It’s 3-1! #FlyTogether pic.twitter.com/RzmavmNQII

— Anaheim Ducks (@AnaheimDucks) November 10, 2025

Scheifele’s giveaway wasn’t a matter of fatigue; it was a matter of execution. The Ducks broadcast would go on to call it a “soft” play by the Jets while praising Anaheim’s persistence.

“They carried a lot of the load early on and now they have to recognize too: When it’s going the other way, they’ve got to be good without the puck — like I ask all our lines. You have to defend first,” Arniel said.

Now Winnipeg is 0-3-0 on its California road trip, outscored 9-2 by Los Angeles, San Jose, and Anaheim over the course of three games. The Jets have looked slow, appearing to vindicate preseason concerns. Offensive drivers like Scheifele, Connor, and Gabriel Vilardi are straying from their 200 foot game, while persistent defensive players on Adam Lowry, Jonathan Toews, and Parker Ford’s lines aren’t scoring.

Arniel responded to his top line’s effort on the second Sennecke goal by starting Toews’ power play unit the next time the Ducks took a penalty. It was a sensible decision but it’s difficult to go back to that well when Connor, Scheifele, and company are scoring all of the goals. It’s true that Winnipeg needs much better defensive work from its top line (and top pairing) than it’s gotten on its road trip thus far.

It’s also true that somebody needs to put the puck in the net.

Cole Perfetti came closest on Sunday, missing a late first period chance teed up for him by Toews, but he’s still shaking off some rust. Toews has two goals in 15 games this season; Sennecke and Leo Carlsson got two each against Winnipeg on the second half of a back-to-back. Lowry is three games back from hip surgery and hasn’t scored a point. There’s no cheat in these players — you’re not going to find too many commentators referring to Toews’ play as “soft” — but it’s clear that Winnipeg is going to need more than better defence from Scheifele’s line to get itself back on track.

This becomes particularly true if the Jets keep losing the special teams battle.

The Ducks earned their second goal on the power play, with Chris Kreider somehow taking both Luke Schenn and Haydn Fleury out of the play in front of Comrie as Troy Terry fed Leo Carlsson a clever pass. They picked up their fourth with a series of passes that left Connor chasing the puck high in the zone and drew Schenn out into the high slot, out of position.

Leo Carlsson: Good at Hockey.#FlyTogether pic.twitter.com/0zXREyG7vM

— Victory+ (@victoryplustv) November 10, 2025

“The big thing we’ve talked about is taking their time and space away and trying to be aggressive,” Connor said. “It’s tough at times. You saw with San Jose the other night when they had three guys real high. It kind of drags you out. You’ve got to be more patient. Then we want to keep our D as close to the net as possible. So we’ve just got to be smart and maybe tone it down a bit — pick our spots when to be more aggressive and be smarter as a forward group.”

Meanwhile, the Jets haven’t scored a power play goal since October 30 against Chicago. Winnipeg’s special teams have been outscored 3-0 on the road trip, with the power play dropping to 13th and the penalty kill to sixth in the league. Those are good numbers to be “dropping” to, but the Jets are also at risk of falling out of playoff position.

This road trip was meant to be about establishing Winnipeg’s identity — putting so much distance between the Jets and the pack that Winnipeg could start preparing itself for its best shot at playoff success. Instead, they’ve dropped to 9-6-0 after 15 games after going 14-1-0 a year ago. They begin the week in a wild card spot, tied with Utah and Los Angeles in points but maintaining a game in hand.

Winnipeg’s flood of meetings had delayed post-practice interviews by several minutes on Saturday. The players emerged subdued, with far less chatter at the team’s lunch table in Anaheim than there had been at the Kings’ practice facility in El Segundo two days before. It seemed as though Arniel had given his group plenty to think about and that the Jets were taking their responsibilities quite seriously.

Arniel had asked for smarter decisions with the puck, better transition play, and more competitiveness in Winnipeg’s battles. Then, when he dissected the Jets’ game at Honda Center, he talked about inconsistency, poor execution, and how the Jets’ forwards got beat back into their own zone. These are supposed to be Winnipeg’s foundation.

It’s important to mention that we knew the Jets would struggle this season. We advised not to count them out when that time came — and would stick to that advice, knowing that Lowry, Perfetti, and Toews are still shaking off rust and that Dylan Samberg’s good health is on the way too. The alarming part is not that the Jets have lost three games in a row or are fighting for a wild card spot. It’s that, some 2000 miles from the Jets’ dressing room at Canada Life Centre — where the word “compete” is painted on the walls in bold font — the Jets fell well short of their own standards. Again.

“We wanted to get on them early and we didn’t do it. We just didn’t execute properly,” Perfetti said. “I just know that, as a group, we have so much more to give.”

“It happened many different ways. It wasn’t one thing they were beating us at,” Connor said.

After all of those meetings and all of the discussion, it seems prudent to give Arniel the last word.

Did he get the pushback he wanted?

“No, not really.”