Claude Noel’s Season Segments: Team Still Struggling

In the pre-season, coach Claude Noel told us that he breaks the season in five-game segments to keep the team focused, and explained his moderate and attainable expectations that the team win 3 out of every 5. Half way through the year, we take a look at the team’s success using those segments.

SegmentRecordROW1 to 52-3-026 to 102-2-1111 to 151-3-1016 to 204-1-0221 to 251-2-2026 to 303-2-0331 to 352-2-1236 to 402-3-02

That’s the raw data and boy is it ugly.

The team has won just two of its eight  5-game segments this season. Games 16 to 20 started with the the group’s best game of the season on November 4th against Detroit. The Jets won 4-2 that game, followed by a loss to Chicago 4-1. But that loss would be the only one of that segment, as they team went on to thump Nashville 5-0, come from behind to earn a 5-4 shootout win over San Jose, and then eke out a 3-2 shootout win over Detroit. 

The only other five game segment in which the team had a winning record came at the start of their Eastern Conference road trip, where wins over New Jersey, Long Island, and New York were somewhat overshadowed by a tight 2-1 loss in Philly and the team’s worst performance of the year in Sunrise, Florida. 

The strongest criticism of this team, however, is that they can’t win without the skills competition. The Jets are currently ranked 23rd in the league for regulation and overtime wins with just 13 (of 18 total wins, or roughly three quarters). That’s behind Toronto (14) and other .500 (or sub-.500) teams such as New Jersey (16) and Nashville (17). Pittsburgh and Anaheim each have double the Jets’ number, leading the league at 26 ROW’s.

What’s worse for the Jets is that they have just one 5-game segment with 3 or more ROW’s, and it came against some very poor Eastern Conference teams. In fact, 7 of the team’s 13 ROW’s have been against Eastern Conference teams. Still more troubling is that they only have 8 wins against the West in 26 tries.

Their recent two-game winning streak against Central Division opponents brings their in-division record to 5-11-3, of which 3 are ROW’s. 

This is a mostly frivilous exercise, I admit. It doesn’t tell us much more about the team than we already knew, and Claude Noel has said himself that this team needs to get on a roll and string some games together.

Still, we know the team has set these internal goals for themselves, and intend for these 5-game segments to focus and energize them during a marathon season. So far, the Jets have managed to accomplish their stated goal just 25% of the time, and only half that rate if we look at ROW’s alone. That tells us that either this form of goal setting is not working, or that we’d really hate to see what happens when they don’t have it. 

In either case, it reveals that this season is shaping up to be like the two before it – closer in the standings than it should be, and full of more hope than accomplishment.