His team has all but fallen out of the playoff race.

He's on pace for his lowest point total, not including the lockout season, in seven years.

And now, at a contract impasse with his employer and only months from free agency, there are public questions about his leadership.

It seems Winnipeg Jets captain Andrew Ladd's star is plummeting even faster than that of his team.

Yet, the only captain V. 2.0 of the Jets has ever known says he still can't picture himself in another uniform.

“At this time it's hard for me to see that,” Ladd told a swarm of reporters after practice, Monday. “But I've also been around long enough to realize that anything can happen and things change quickly. So you never know.”

That the Jets are even considering moving on without No. 16 – they have to consider it, given his contract status – is something nobody could have predicted a few months ago, and raises questions about the direction of the entire organization.

Last season Ladd shrugged off the need for sports hernia surgery to post a career-high 62 points and help the Jets earn their first playoff spot, a decision that was universally lauded going into the summer.

He and the Jets would have little trouble coming to an agreement on a new deal, the thinking went, keeping the team pointed in the right direction.

“If you ask both sides, we would have both said we'd have something done by now,” Ladd said.

Instead, things have gone off-kilter. On the ice and at the negotiating table.

The Jets haven't been able to bottle the formula – hard-nosed, in-your-face hockey with one foot always on the gas – that bred success.

And Monday, the captain faced a bucket-load of questions about his future, his play, even his commitment, including one about whether his lack of a contractual commitment to the Jets affected his ability to lead the team.

“No,” he said. “I'm pretty sure I'll be here tomorrow. It doesn't affect anything we're trying to do in here. We're motivated to try and get back in this race and get things going the right way.”

Ladd tried to suggest lots of players go through this every year.

But his situation differs in one key way: hardly any of them are team captains.

Insisting it hasn't affected his play, he did acknowledge it's not the preferred route.

“Obviously the easiest thing to have happen is to get something done and understand where you're going to be, for you and your family,” he said. “But that's ideal. That's not how it happens every year.”

The Jets will play one more game, at home against Arizona, Tuesday, before getting five days off for the NHL all-star break.

That's a lot of spare time to contemplate their sinking status, their horrible special teams and, yes, the future of their captain.

“We're only human,” Drew Stafford said. “So it's natural to have those kind of emotions come in, especially when you're losing – things get amplified quite a bit. But at the same time we're not trying to look too far ahead.”

Getting away from it all is probably what this team needs more than anything.

Stafford, for instance, is taking his wife and child to Banff for a few days.

Whether or not Ladd can get away from it all is another matter.

There's no trade moratorium during the break. And when he gets back, presumably still as a Winnipeg Jet, the same questions will be waiting.

“Being in a market that follows the team as closely as it does, you're asked about it all the time,” Ladd said. “You're asked about a lot of different things. You're asked about why you're not winning hockey games, too.”

The losing has certainly turned the heat up on the captain.

“That eats at me every day,” Ladd said. “You're trying to figure out how to get this going the right way.

“We just need to get some sort of good feeling going in this room. It's going to take a little more from everybody.”

You could say the same thing about his contract.

So what does this team have left to give? And what's it willing to lose?

Five weeks to the trade deadline.

Probably less to an answer.

paul.friesen@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @friesensunmedia