The regular season is nearly done and so are the Jets’ playoff hopes. These next three weeks will involve hand-wringing about individual performances, points wasted and opportunities lost.

Today, we talk about coaching.

Winnipeg’s coaching is letting the team down.

It’s been called out by NHL broadcasts, including Craig Button calling the Jets’ defence “terrible” in the midst of a TSN tirade earlier this year. It’s been referenced obliquely by opposing coaches, like after a game when Boston’s Bruce Cassidy talked about Winnipeg giving up too many slot shots.

On Friday night, after Winnipeg lost 6-1 to Florida, the Jets followed the Panthers’ lead by carving apart their own game, using words as opposed to finished checks.

“We didn’t come out ready to play. Our line goes out there the first two shifts and we get scored on and that’s just straight up not good enough,” Nikolaj Ehlers said. “With the position that we’re in, you can’t do that. They’re obviously a great team and we weren’t good today. With a team like that, that is buzzing in their own building, they’re going to take advantage of a team that’s not playing the right way.”

The Jets have not been playing “the right way” with any semblance of consistency throughout the season.

They were an inconsistent but slightly above average team under Paul Maurice, sewered by special teams while hovering slightly over 50 percent in shots and expected goals at even strength. They have been a consistently poor team under interim head coach Dave Lowry, with those five-on-five shot metrics falling well below 50 percent and special teams failing to make up meaningful ground.

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These are just basic metrics, but Ehlers framed the Jets’ failure to “play the right way” in terms of fundamentals.

“You chip the puck out, you chip the puck in, you get on their defencemen, you shoot the puck and you work hard, you skate fast,” Ehlers said. “It’s as simple as that. Today, we were trying to pass it through and we were turning off of them when they had the puck and not being physical and not playing fast.”

How is it that a team’s biggest issues can be fundamental items like puck management and effort level 75 games into an NHL season?

“It’s a good question,” Ehlers said. “That’s why we’re not in a playoff spot. We haven’t played the right way in a lot of games and you see what that leads to. I think the easy way to put it is that we’re just not playing the type of hockey that the Jets want to play and the type of hockey that, you know, you can hold everyone accountable for. And it sucks. It absolutely sucks.”

I thought Ehlers’ use of the word accountable was telling.

Poor puck management, missed checks or poor defensive efforts have not been met with visible consequences. Ice time does not change. The hierarchies of Winnipeg’s forward and defence groups do not change.

I asked Ehlers what he meant when discussing accountability.

“When you don’t play the right way,” he said. “When it’s not going for you and you keep trying to push the nice plays and all of that. You’re just putting your team in a tough position. And it’s not just one or two guys. It’s almost everyone.”

When a hockey team consistently fails to start on time, digging early holes through poor puck management, and when star players create enough offence to win games but then give it back due to poor backpressure or missed defensive assignments, the solutions must come from coaching.

We don’t see defensive assignments corrected in practice — or if we do, they go beyond my observational skills. If missed assignments are discussed, they happen in video sessions. Maurice once told me that Kyle Connor — a brilliant offensive player with a poor defensive impact — didn’t need to be shown video of his defence. I wonder if Lowry, who works with the identical staff to the one Maurice left behind, has maintained that same approach.

But that’s just speculation. The only thing I can definitively say is that we don’t see the improvement that lessons taught — and lessons absorbed — could bring.

It’s difficult to know the exact degree to which Winnipeg’s struggles to play a complete team game, where defencemen jump into the play and forwards track back so hard that the Jets are never outmanned, falls upon coaching. It is possible that Maurice left and Lowry falters due more to obstinance from Winnipeg’s most important players than from their own failings.

I asked Lowry why he thought the Jets continue to struggle with fundamentals — and what his role might be in correcting things.

“Well, I think the biggest reason, the why behind it, is because it’s not pretty hockey,” Lowry said of the way Winnipeg needs to play. “It’s functional. It wins hockey games. And they are critical details. When you’ve been a rush team, you want to continue to try and make plays. And the biggest thing for us right now is when we have our success, we put pucks in behind, we play in straight lines, we play direct going through the neutral zone.”

He didn’t answer the second half of the question — the one about his role — but Lowry’s frustration was clear. We know that he tore a strip off the Jets players in the first intermission of Winnipeg’s game against Ottawa last week; going back to that well may not be sustainable.

Keep this goal in mind. Can you identify Winnipeg’s neutral zone defence on the play?

As Florida controlled Friday’s game from start to finish, all I could think of was that it’s only been a few years since Winnipeg rolled over teams in exactly the same way.

Brenden Dillon, who was acquired as part of Kevin Cheveldayoff’s efforts to retool the blue line, put the Panthers’ quality into words.

“They play together, they’re predictable and I think they play to their system really well,” Dillon said. “They use their skill, they allow their defencemen to get up in the rush and support, and their forwards, too, they’re responsible. They’re tracking back, allowing their D to gap up and ultimately turn pucks over for them. I think transition for them is their biggest thing. They’re able to push pucks and make plays offensively.”

Given that Winnipeg’s defencemen don’t frequently join the rush (Josh Morrissey is the exception, although he seems to get the green light most often when trailing), nor do Winnipeg’s forwards track back predictably, it seemed to me that Dillon was describing the Jets “to-do” list in addition to Florida’s strengths.

I asked Dillon if his description of Panthers hockey was also the template for playoff hockey.

“I think so, for sure. They always have a guy stretching, which obviously you gotta respect that guy. It kind of opens up some space for the weak-side D or the forward underneath and they’re able to generate some ice and gap the D out and be able to use their strength, which is their speed,” Dillon said. “They know what their strengths are they continue to play to them. Their defencemen had great gap, they’re physical and their forwards coming back, too, cause some of those turnovers to be able to transition the puck like that.”

I’ll admit that my ears perked up when Ehlers talked about “accountability” and Winnipeg “not playing the right way.” These words felt like the honesty of a deeply frustrated player. Dillon struck me the same way when he talked about forwards tracking back to “allow” defencemen to gap tightly.

There are systemic issues at play in Winnipeg that go well beyond personnel.

Think back to Gustav Forsling’s goal in the clip above. Can you name the Jets’ neutral zone defensive formation?

Hint 1: Los Angeles is famous for its 1-3-1 set-up and teams like Colorado and Florida run a 1-2-2.

Hint 2: Here is a clip of Winnipeg’s neutral zone defence working almost exactly as it’s supposed to until everything goes horribly wrong.

Winnipeg runs a 1-1-3 in the neutral zone, where the first forward (Ehlers in this case) tries to force the other team to pick a side of the ice.

Florida chooses to go up the right wing in this case, so it becomes Ehlers and Paul Stastny’s job to keep the Panthers on the right wing and, ideally, to slow them down.

Meanwhile, Morgan Barron has joined Dylan Samberg and Dillon in a three-man wall at the Jets blue line.

If Ehlers makes Florida pick a side and Stastny slows them down, then the three men at Winnipeg’s line should be able to stop Florida’s zone entry.

In fact, that’s exactly what happens. Only Barron’s failure to clear the puck and the lost coverage that follows lead to Huberdeau’s goal.

Here is a tactics sheet from Jack Han, former Toronto Marlies video coach and current hockey consultant and all-ages player development coach.

Whether it’s a play starting in the Panthers’ zone or a breakout with more time like in the clip, Jets defencemen can only step up at the blue line if forwards are coming back hard. Think of every time a Jets defenceman used to stuff opposing breakouts by jumping up the boards in the offensive zone. They can only do that with backpressure.

Similarly, think about what would have happened in the 1-1-3 clip above if Ehlers and Stastny didn’t do their job. Winnipeg’s defencemen would be forced to back off the blue line to respect Florida’s speed.

The Jets do not consistently get the kind of backpressure that lets defencemen “gap up” as aggressively as they need to.

When Dillon talks about Florida tracking back to “allow” Panthers defencemen to step up and win pucks, he is indirectly pointing out Winnipeg’s own struggles in that area.

When he talks about Florida looking for stretch passes or activating their weak-side defenceman into the rush, he’s talking about ways that teams force defencemen to back off their blue line — unless they have backpressure from forwards.

It’s no surprise Winnipeg has given up its blue line more this season than it ever did when it was a consistent playoff team.

Yet the head coach is focused on shots from the point.

Asked why all of the talk about “playing the right way” hasn’t clicked this season, Lowry doubled down on the idea that Winnipeg tries too hard to be fancy.

“Everyone wants to score a pretty goal. Everyone wants to be a team that makes highlight-reel plays. The big thing for us is that the way we have to play to be successful is we have to play direct and we have to play in straight lines,” he said. “I say it every night: when we are getting pucks to the goal line and we establish our forecheck and establish our offensive-zone play, we find ways to win hockey games. We’re trying to play a skilled game where for us to be successful, we have to get it through.”

Perhaps it really is as simple as a battle of wills between players and coaches to play in straight lines more often.

If that’s the case, then how is the coach losing that battle of wills 75 games into the season? Why has the general manager been content to wait and watch?

These questions are easy for a writer to ask. The difference between playoff quality hockey and what Winnipeg played Friday is easy to see.

The difficult part will be when True North starts searching for solutions.

(Photo: Jim Rassol / USA Today)