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RALEIGH – Good morning, folks!
It’s not often we can say that in our little missive, but that’s the case today as the Winnipeg Jets visit the Carolina Hurricanes for their earliest start of the season. No doubt coach Rick Bowness will be hoping his group doesn’t come out like they missed a wake-up call, which should have happened on Thursday night in the form of a 4-1 loss to the Dallas Stars to kick off this three-game road trip.
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The Jets were second-best in all areas of the game. Now, another stiff test in the form of the Hurricanes, who are trying to catch the New York Rangers for top spot in the Metropolitan Division. Carolina is 5-1-1 in the last seven, including back-to-back road victories this past week over the Minnesota Wild and Columbus Blue Jackets.
“They’ve built their team over the last four or five years. They have,” said Jets head coach Rick Bowness. “If you want to play a big, aggressive, physical style, you’ve got to go out and get those types of players. They’ve done a really good job of filling all of those holes with players that play the way they want to play the game.”
With 24 games left on the schedule in the regular season, things are ramping up and Saturday figures to be another intense game against a bona fide contender.
“The amount of time you have the puck on your stick uncontested just shrinks,” said Jets defenceman Nate Schmidt. “Whether it’s offensively, defensively or going through the neutral zone, that’s the biggest key at this time of the year.”
Winnipeg’s lineup is a bit of a question mark, with the status of Gabe Vilardi (upper-body injury) and a handful of other skaters all officially game-time decisions. In that sense, take the Jets projected lines below with a bit of a grain of salt, as one (or both) of David Gustafsson and Rasmus Kupari could potentially draw into the lineup. And even if everyone is good to go, it’s not clear if Bowness will revert back to the lines he started with in the Dallas game, or go with some other combination(s). In other words, stay tuned!
Connor Hellebuyck vs. Pyotr Kochetkov — fresh off being named the NHL’s rookie of the month for February — is the projected goalie battle.
This is the second and final meeting of the year, with the Jets taking a 2-1 decision back on Dec. 4 at Canada Life Centre.
Here’s some other information to get you set.
FROM THE PRESS BOX
MIKE SAYS: Tick, tock. There are only three games left until the trade deadline, and today should provide Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff with more evidence about what his club may (or may not) be in the market for given they are facing another legitimate contender in the Hurricanes.
Thursday’s rather poor showing in Dallas suggested Winnipeg still has some significant holes in the lineup, especially once Vilardi was sat down for the third period with an ailment. Another forward, particularly one that can make an impact in the top six or top nine, should be on the shopping list.
Cole Perfetti was once in that top six but now finds himself on the fourth line as his struggles continue. Unfortunately, he had another rough night at the office, with a poor pass that was quickly turned over and resulted in the opening goal for the Stars. I continue to wonder just how close he is to a press box stint as a healthy scratch. That kind of play certainly doesn’t help his cause.
It’s not just the lack of offensive production — Perfetti now has no points in the last 15 games — but he’s not even shooting the puck much lately. In his last five games, Perfetti has recorded zero, two, zero, zero and one shot on goal. That is sub-optimal for an offensive-minded player who has now been stuck on 30 points (14 goals, 16 assists) for the past six weeks.
Carolina is a shot volume club, which we saw back in early December when they peppered the Winnipeg net early and often. Laurent Brossoit was brilliant in that game, basically stealing a victory for the Jets. No doubt they’d like to make life a bit easier for Hellebuyck today, while also providing a bit of run support for him.
KEN SAYS: If falling to 0-3 in the season series to the Stars isn’t going to heighten the focus for the Jets as it pertains to paying closer attention to the details, I’m not quite sure what will.
Some correctable and costly mistakes were made in the first period of Thursday’s loss and if those things aren’t cleaned up, the Hurricanes are the type of team that can make their opponent pay for those preventable errors.
The last time the Jets paid a visit to North Carolina, things didn’t go very well for them, as Bowness sent a stern message to his team by benching the top line of Mark Scheifele, Kyle Connor and Nino Niederreiter for the final 11:45 of the second period in what turned into a 5-3 loss.
It was a relatively quiet evening for Scheifele and Connor against the Stars, even before Vilardi sat out the third period with an upper-body injury.
The top line will likely need to be more impactful in this one if the Jets are going to be able to regroup against the Hurricanes.
Bowness felt the Jets’ second line was its best trio on Thursday, as Ehlers generated four shots on goal and eight shot attempts to go along with his power-play assist on the goal from Vladislav Namestnikov.
Speaking of Niederreiter, he provided this assessment when asked for how he thought his line has been playing of late.
“We need to be better, in general. We’ve got to make more (plays) and make sure that we get momentum to our side,” said Niederreiter. “That’s something we’ve got to take care of, outwork (the opponent) in the O-zone a little more, get more traffic to the net and be tenacious going to the net. That’s something that we haven’t been doing very well.”
Although he’s been contributing in other areas of the game, the goal-scoring drought for Jets captain Adam Lowry has reached 19 games, leaving him as a prime candidate to snap the slump.
Winnipegger Seth Jarvis is having a fantastic season for the Hurricanes.
Carolina Hurricanes’ Seth Jarvis (24) attempts a shot on Winnipeg Jets goaltender Laurent Brossoit (39) during first period NHL action in Winnipeg on December 4, 2023. (Fred Greenslade / The Canadian Press)
The feisty forward is second on the team in both goals (19) and points (48), trailing captain Sebastian Aho in both categories — that’s pretty good company to be keeping.
Jarvis has played 210 NHL games since being taken 13th overall in the 2020 NHL Draft and he’s racked up 50 goals and 127 while providing a solid two-way game.
The future looks bright for the former Portland Winterhawks star in the Western Hockey League and he’s already produced a goal and four points in the first five career meetings against his hometown team.
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