From there though, the game turned into a track meet which clearly favoured the young Sharks who took over the rest of the night. Sharks star Macklin Celebrini recorded a goal and two assists and surpassed Joe Thornton’s franchise record with his 115th point of the season with his 45th goal of the campaign in the third period. The fans put on a good show though, doing the wave in the final period and giving the team a standing ovation after the final buzzer.
"You are disappointed that you weren't better and you didn't win those games the other thing for me is that they are not getting ready for the whiteout and that is the big thing as I know how much this city and this province loves playoff time and that is the hard part is that you have disappointed them. They can't get dressed up, they can't get crazy and they can't have the street parties, so that is the hard part. We are not going to have hockey here again until September.
NOT MAKING PLAYOFFS FRUSTRATING
The scratching and clawing done by the Jets to pull within one point of the making the playoffs, the Olympic schedule, all the injuries and officially being eliminated on Monday seemed to wear the team down this week. The Jets lost four straight to close out the year and gave up 24 goals over those four games. The team did get a good look at the likes of Isak Rosén after his trade from Buffalo, Brad Lambert and Elias Salomonsson got long looks and Nikita Chibrikov and Brayden Jager got some valuable experience.
“I thought there was a lot of good and, I think their intentions were right and trying to do the right thing out there, the effort was there. Honestly, probably would love to get a little bit more practice time and get kind of acclimated that way,” said Dylan DeMelo.
“You kind of get thrown the fire playing every other night and back to backs. But there's some really encouraging signs. And, we got some good youth coming up.”
ALL 82
The Jets had five players appear in all 82 games this season: Kyle Connor, Dylan DeMelo, Mark Scheifele, Jonathan Toews, and Gabriel Vilardi, that is tied for the third-most players to play all 82 games in a season in franchise history. The only two seasons that saw more 82-game players were 2018-19 (7) and 2024-25 (6). This is the second consecutive season playing all 82 games for both Connor and Scheifele, marking the fourth total season reaching the mark for both players. DeMelo has now played in all 82 games for the third consecutive season, skating in 459 of 476 total possible games since being acquired by the Jets and Vilardi dressed for all 82 games for the first time in his career while Toews will now hit the mark for the first time since 2018-19.
