Jets find another unique way to lose

PITTSBURGH — The Winnipeg Jets have found plenty of unique and frustrating ways to lose hockey games this season. But Saturday afternoon may have topped them all.

Try this one on for size: With their game against the Pittsburgh Penguins tied 4-4 and heading to a shootout, head coach Scott Arniel curiously tapped 37-year-old Jonathan Toews and 36-year-old Gustav Nyquist on the shoulders to take the first two breakaway bids.

Not the team’s brightest offensive stars in Mark Scheifele, Kyle Connor, Gabe Vilardi or Josh Morrissey. Not young guns like Cole Perfetti, Brad Lambert, Isak Rosen or the red-hot Morgan Barron.

No, it was the two oldest players on the team, who may both be in the final weeks of their NHL careers, tasked with trying to keep Winnipeg’s fading playoff hopes alive. Toews, who has nine goals this season, hit the post. Nyquist, who has one goal all year, was stopped.

At the other end of the rink, Sidney Crosby and Rickard Rakell beat Connor Hellebuyck clean. And that was all she wrote.

A 5-4 shootout loss is the latest blow to the Jets, who are now winless in their last three games (0-1-2) and sit at 28-29-12 overall, which includes a 1-4 record in games decided by a shootout.

“JT is almost a 50 per cent shooter and Gus is in the 40s, right around 41 (per cent). It was about trying to change it up and get a different look,” Arniel told the Free Press outside the team’s dressing room at PPG Paints Arena.

He’s referring to their career numbers, of course. But the majority of that damage was done years ago.

It’s fair to wonder if Arniel was possibly sending a message to the likes of Scheifele and Connor and Morrissey, who were caught on the ice for an extended shift to begin a wild, wide-open three-on-three overtime which ultimately led to a Pittsburgh power play that was unsuccessful.

“It was just trying to do something a little bit different,” Arniel insisted.

Let the second-guessing begin.

Pittsburgh had been an NHL-worst 1-10 in shootouts this year. They are now 35-18-16 overall to sit in second place in the Metropolitan Division.

Definitely a message

The Jets were coming off a 6-1 beatdown on Thursday night in Boston and should have come racing out of the starting gate in this one.

Instead, they trailed 2-0 just 122 seconds into the game.

Veteran defenceman Dylan DeMelo, who is having some major on-ice struggles lately, was burned badly on both goals by Egor Chinakhov and Rakell. And so Arniel told him to take a seat for the rest of the opening frame, with an ugly stat line that read: 2 shifts, 37 seconds of ice time, minus-two.

“With these afternoon games, sometimes it’s whoever wakes up first that gets the advantage. Pittsburgh certainly came out coming at us like we expected them to come at us, especially with their attack game,” said Arniel.

DeMelo and his teammates, meanwhile, appeared to be mentally back in their warm, cozy beds at the Four Seasons.

The benching ended after the first period, more out of necessity than anything. Winnipeg plays again on Sunday afternoon, and the Jets couldn’t afford to burn out their other five blue-liners — especially since one of them was Neal Pionk, returning from a two-month injury absence.

However, DeMelo was taken off the top pair with Morrissey and moved down to the third-pairing with Haydn Fleury. Rookie Elias Salomonsson moved up to play with Morrissey, while Pionk reunited with his usual partner, Dylan Samberg.

Bowling ball Barron

Goalie interference has become a hot-button topic in the league, and Winnipeg’s first goal of the game will surely pour fuel on the fire.

Barron rushed towards the front of the Pittsburgh net to get a stick on a rebound off a Lambert shot that was stopped by Penguins goalie Arturs Silovs. In doing so, he nudged Penguins defenceman Erik Karlsson straight into Silovs, who went sprawling to the ice as the puck eventually trickled into the net.

Officials called it a good goal, and the Penguins immediately challenged. The call was upheld.

“Eighty per cent,” Barron said when asked how confident he was his 11th of the year would stand, which came at 3:50 of the first period and cut the deficit to 2-1.

“Lambo made a great block and I’m trying to charge up the ice. From my perspective, I’m trying to stop. Obviously,(Karlsson) is a part of my equation in my head but I’m not thinking about him. Watching it over, I felt like he kind of wedged himself in between and if he’s not there, I’m nowhere near the goalie. So, that’s the way I saw it.”

The Penguins, who are now 0-for-8 on goalie interference challenges, couldn’t believe it. They were so irate, their public relations staff handed out printed copies of the NHL rulebook to media members in the press box, believing it supported their case the goal should have been waved off.

Don’t call it a comeback

The Jets managed to erase the early deficit when Cole Koepke finished off a beautiful two-on-one shorthanded rush with Adam Lowry early in the second period to make it 2-2.

Karlsson would restore the lead for the home team with just under five minutes left in the middle frame, but third-period tallies from Pionk (4:04) and Lambert (8:36) gave the Jets the advantage for the first time.

“I liked our resilience and I like the way that we battled back. The last 10 minutes of the first, we were the better team and we took over the game after that,” said Arniel.

Winnipeg’s 4-3 lead could have been bigger. Scheifele had a goal called back on a missed stoppage challenge, with replays confirming Alex Iafallo had grazed the puck with a high stick that initially went undetected. Scheifele then just missed on an open net a few minutes later.

These close calls proved costly when Karlsson struck for a second time with just more than seven minutes left in regulation to tie it 4-4.

“That one was more about how we managed it coming up the ice. We gave them the numbers coming back and so they had their numbers against us,” said Arniel.

“We had done a really good job of not allowing them to get those odd-man looks against us. We did there, unfortunately.”

Hellebuyck couldn’t get over to seal the net in time as Karlsson scored from a tough angle. It also didn’t help that there may have been goalie interference on the play — from his teammate, Fleury.

“We didn’t want to get in a track meet but we put ourselves in a position where we had to,” said Barron.

“I still think there were some moments throughout that game where we can manage it better. We did a good job of getting back in it and sticking with it, but it was not as clean a game as we would have liked to have played.”

Key play

Karlsson’s second goal of the game, late in the third period, took away a valuable point from the visitors.

Three stars

1. PGH D Erik Karlsson: 2 goals

2. WPG RW Brad Lambert: 1 goal, 1 assist

3. PGH Rickard Rakell: 1 goal

Extra, extra

Pionk’s last game was on Jan. 13. Since then, he suffered an injury, was close to returning to the lineup, then suffered a new ailment while ramping up his original recovery.

“It’s been a wild year in that sense. Could it have been related? Maybe, (it would) be hard to prove. Frustrating, for sure, but glad I’m back now,” he said.

His return knocked Jacob Bryson out of the lineup, as he joined fellow defenceman Ville Heinola as a healthy scratch.

Samberg took a puck to the face during the overtime session and looked to be in distress, writhing on the ice for a second but then quickly skating off on his own and going straight down the tunnel to the room.

“He’s OK. He’s all right. Obviously, it looked more like a cut than anything. He seems to be OK with everything else. He should be good,” said Arniel.

Hellebuyck stopped 26 of 30 shots, while Silovs blocked 21 of 25.

Winnipeg went 0-for-1 on the power play, while Pittsburgh went 0-for-2.

The Jets flew to the Big Apple following the game and will now close out this quick road trip by facing the New York Rangers inside Madison Square Garden on Sunday (11 a.m. CT).

“We need all the points right now,” said Barron.

“We have kind of put ourselves in this position, so the good news is we have another chance to go for two (on Sunday) so we will try to regroup and go back at them.”

www.winnipegfreepress.com/mikemcintyre