Trouba blames odd-man rushes and breakaways for Jets defeat

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This article was published 10/11/2015 (3620 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. PAUL — They got beat. Handily.

But the message in the Winnipeg Jets dressing room here at Xcel Energy Center Tuesday night was that a 5-3 loss to the Minnesota Wild, which was a lot more lopsided than the final score suggested, had more to do with the Jets beating themselves than anything the Wild did.

“What they got was a function of what we gave them — it was the odd-man rushes and the breakaways. And that’s on us. That’s for us to clean up,” Jets defenceman Jacob Trouba said after the game.

The Jets gave up two breakaway goals in a span of under two minutes during a four-goal second period by the Wild that saw the Jets scrambling to keep up with a Minnesota onslaught that came fast and furious.

Jets goaltender Ondrej Pavelec, who was making a rare second consecutive start, was lifted after the fourth Wild goal and replaced by Michael Hutchinson, but nobody in the Jets dressing room was even remotely pinning this one on Winnipeg’s goaltending.

“We can’t rely on our goalies to make those kind of saves for us. There was just a let up by us,” said Jets centre Bryan Little, who had a pair of goals and now leads the Jets with eight this season.

Trailing 5-1, the Jets mustered a minor comeback in the third period but it was much too little and much too late.

“I don’t know why it took us being down 5-1 to turn it on like that,” said Little. “But that’s the way we have to play is like we did at the end, with some desperation. It’s early in the season but these are big points against teams in our division. We’ve got to find a way to come out like we did in the end.”

Trouba said the blame for all those odd-man rushes falls on the Jets blueliners. “You can’t really expect our goalie to handle those. That’s on the defencemen. We just have to be better on our pinches…

“We want to be aggressive and we want to be along the walls, but you have to pick your times and make the right reads to make the plays when they’re supposed to be made. But that’s kind of been a theme the last couple games, giving up odd-man rushes. It’s something we need to clean up.”

The Jets have now lost three in a row and are just 1-3-1 in their last five games.

Jets head coach Paul Maurice, whose post-game availability Tuesday night clocked in at a season-low 1:12, was asked if his team could build on their third period heading into the rest of a four-game Central Division swing with dates in Dallas on Thursday, Nashville on Saturday and St. Louis on Monday.

“No, we’ll build on our first two periods. That’s where we need to get better,” said Maurice.

The loss to the Wild dropped Winnipeg’s road record this season to 5-3-1, while the Wild improved at home to a sparkling 7-1-0.

email: paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

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