Depth scoring paces Jets past Blues

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This article was published 24/10/2023 (713 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Jets have their first winning streak of the young season.

A tidy, 4-2 triumph over the St. Louis Blues on Tuesday night at Canada Life Centre is their second in a row and brings them back to .500 on the year with a 3-3-0 record. The visitors fall to 2-2-1.

Connor Hellebuyck stopped 18 of 20 shots — including back-to-back breakaways in the second period by St. Louis sniper Jordan Kyrou — to lead the way.

David Gustafsson, Mason Appleton, Kyle Connor and Morgan Barron scored for the Jets. Pavel Buchnevich and Robert Thomas replied for the Blues.

“This is a divisional game and we needed a big win,” said Gustafsson. “I think we all played really good. Even though they had some chances I feel like we were the better team.”

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the action from our press box perch:

1) Next man up: There’s no question the Jets have one of their deepest forward groups yet this year, which is why the knee injury suffered by forward Gabriel Vilardi in the third game of the young season — expected to cost him four-to-six weeks — isn’t being treated with any kind of panic.

Just a “next man up” mentality. Fittingly, the player who came into the lineup to take Vilardi’s place opened the scoring. Gustafsson took a beautiful behind-the-net feed from Cole Perfetti and beat Jordan Binnington for the second goal of his career at 2:55 of the second period.

No doubt that was an enormous relief to the 23-year-old Swedish forward, who scored his first NHL goal back in November 2019 — the 18th game of his rookie campaign — then went 58 straight over nearly four years without one.

“I think I had some good looks today and one of them found the back of the net,” said Gustafsson. “It was a really nice pass. (Perfetti) is a skilled player, he can make those passes. Whenever you’re on the ice with him, just have your stick down and you can get a good scoring chance like I did.”

Gustafsson said during training camp he needs to bring more offence if he wants to stick at the NHL level, and he had a great preseason which included three goals. Although he was on the outside looking in as the 13th forward when the season began, he looks like a player waiting to pounce on his opportunity.

Gustafsson fired three shots on net Tuesday, which ties a career high he’d previously accomplished on two occasions. The confidence was palpable.

2) Depth makes a difference: Winnipeg needed just 18 seconds to strike again after Gustafsson’s goal, as Appleton scored his second of the year following some great puck movement involving Adam Lowry and Neal Pionk.

Getting tallies from your third (Appleton) and fourth (Gustafsson) liners in rapid succession isn’t going to happen every night. It is, however, the kind of production contenders typically count on.

“It’s huge. Those are big momentum shifts,” said Appleton. “When you score, you want to keep that pressure on and make them feel like they’re on their heels a bit and overthinking things. That’s kind of just a mindset that we have. Same with the last two minutes of each period and first two minutes of each period. Those windows are where you can turn hockey games. I thought we did a really good job.”

St. Louis cut the deficit in half when Buchnevich scored on the power play with just under two minutes left in the second period.

Hellebuyck had no chance, with Buchnevich re-directing a Brayden Schenn pass to the top corner. Brenden Dillon was in the box at the time for high-sticking.

3) Snipers gonna snipe: Of course, it’s nice when your scoring stars shine bright as well, and that was the case when Connor picked a corner and ripped a rocket past Binnington 4:10 into the third period to restore a bit of breathing room for the home team.

Connor now has four goals in six games, and might just challenge the career-high of 47 he scored in the 2021-22 campaign if he keeps going at this rate.

His goal proved to be the game-winner as Thomas scored with just over three minutes left in regulation and Binnington pulled for an extra attacker.

Barron — who plays on the fourth line with Gustafsson and Rasmus Kupari — snuffed out any hope of a comeback by the visitors when he scored an empty-netter with 70 seconds left on the clock.

“As a whole, I thought we did a lot of real good things,” said associate coach Scott Arniel. “We talked this morning about how good St. Louis is on the rush and we saw that, especially the top line. They had five or six chances there through the first two periods. We kind of got that straightened away a little bit in the third, we did a little better job of keeping them in front of us. At the end of the day, we’ve always talked about playing tight games, 2-1 games, and finding ways to finish them off and that’s where we were going into the third period and we did a great job of winning it.”

4) Divisional dominance? This was the first of 26 games the Jets will play this season within the Central Division.

Under the NHL’s balanced 82-game schedule matrix, Winnipeg plays a home-and-home with the 16 Eastern Conference teams (32 games), three games against the eight clubs in the Pacific Division (24 games) and the remainder against their seven closest rivals.

This year, the Jets face the Blues and Colorado Avalanche three times each, and the Arizona Coyotes, Nashville Predators, Minnesota Wild, Dallas Stars and Chicago Blackhawks four times each.

It’s safe to say their record in those contests will go a long way in determining their spot in the standings. A 1-0-0 record is a good start.

Winnipeg went an impressive 18-8-0 in the Central last year, which played a significant role in finishing fourth in the division and claiming the second and final Western Conference wild-card.

5) Bowness back home: The Jets got some good news Tuesday, with Judy Bowness being released from hospital after suffering a seizure Sunday night. Rick Bowness has taken a leave of absence to be at his wife’s side, with no timeline for a return. The family is awaiting further testing. Associate coach Scott Arniel is handling bench boss duties on an interim basis until Bowness returns.

“They talked about making sure they got out and not let him down. They wanted to do it for all of the right reasons,” Arniel said of the player mentality. “Like we said, we’re a family here and we care about each other, and they care about Rick and Judy. They wanted to put their best foot forward and I thought they did a great job of it. I said this morning, big divisional opponent and our first opponent of the year and it’s a big one.”

6) Extra, extra:

-Winnipeg went 0-for-3 on the power play, while St. Louis went 1-for-4.

-Binnington finished with 26 saves on 29 shots.

-The crowd was once again a story, with just 11,136 taking in the action. That’s the lowest in Jets 2.0 history not counting when public health protocols limited gathering sizes during the pandemic.

After drawing 13,410 for the home-opener against the Florida Panthers, the Jets welcomed 11,226 through the gates last Tuesday against the Los Angeles Kings and 11,521 last Thursday against the Vegas Golden Knights.

-Tuesday was the annual “Child Advocacy Game” on behalf of Toba Centre, and that meant an adorable ceremonial puck drop featuring support dog Duke. Jets captain Adam Lowry, who is an ambassador for the non-profit organization, also presented a $50,000 fundraising cheque on behalf of True North.

-The Jets now hit the road for a pair of games out East. They’ll face the Detroit Red Wings in Motown on Thursday night, then pay their only visit of the year to La Belle Province as they face the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday night.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

X: @mikemcintyrewpg