Jets-Avs tilt an OT thriller
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/10/2014 (4033 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The killer move in chess doesn’t always come in the first eight moves.
Sunday at the MTS Centre, the Winnipeg Jets waited until very late to deliver it, and the fact they limited their major slip-ups all afternoon long put them in a position for Bryan Little’s game-winner with just 24.2 seconds remaining in overtime.
The 2-1 victory over the Colorado Avalanche before 15,016 customers was the right way to play and helped the home team end a five-game stay at 2-3.
Now the Jets head out on the road for four games this week, and nine of the next 11, where their 3-5-0 record isn’t likely to scare anybody but must improve soon to stay with the NHL’s Western Conference pack.
An entertaining overtime saw both teams threaten.
Ondrej Pavelec in the Jets’ net stopped Avs captain Gabriel Landeskog early on, and right-winger Blake Wheeler pulled off an acrobatic, diving play break-up near his own net — denying Ryan O’Reilly a shot at the winning tap-in — in the final minute of overtime.
Cue Andrew Ladd, who waffled a back-hander towards the net from the high slot, and on its way it clipped Little’s equipment and wormed its way through the body of Avs goalie Semyon Varlamov.
“I saw Litts at the net, so I just figured we’d get some action there, hope something lucky went in,” said Ladd, who deflected home Winnipeg’s other goal in the first period. “At that point you don’t really want to be messing around with plays up top. I thought it was the safe play and lucky enough it went in.”
Shoot, shoot
The Jets ended up with a wide margin in shots attempted, 82-40, and may have had only a slight edge in the game’s good chances thanks to 34 blocks by the Avalanche.
“We’ll keep working on it and finding ways to get the puck through, changing angles and taking something off the shot,” Jets coach Paul Maurice said. “But our battle was real good, our physicality was real good.”
Trending up
The shots and the “right way” were positives for the Jets on Sunday, as they fixed some of the minor things that turned into major scoring opportunities for Tampa Bay in Friday night’s loss here.
“I think we liked our effort last game,” Ladd said. “We just needed to shore up some of the mental parts of it. I thought we did that tonight.
“I don’t think it was a matter of work harder in this room. We’ve had the right effort. It was just work smarter. So yeah, we need to spend time on it and at times you need to be a little more patient with routes and let things kind of come to you.”
Added Maurice: “We feel we can fix the system things, get better and better at those. But we had a good emotional level through the whole game.”
Quite a pace
Little, with credit for Sunday’s winner, now has five goals in eight games this season, leading the team in a big way.
“After that game Friday, we had a positive attitude and everyone was upbeat and we were talking about it before the game,” Little said. “It just felt like we weren’t going to lose this game, that we were going to do whatever it takes to get the win.”
Buff the basher
With 4:01 left in the second, Dustin Byfuglien brought the home fans out of their seats with an aggressive forecheck, smashing Colorado’s Tyson Barrie and John Mitchell to the ice in bang-bang succession.
“I think stuff like that really gets our bench going and gets the crowd fired up and everyone feeds off it,” Ladd said. “I hope we see more of that.”
Maurice said that could be a great weapon for the Jets if Byfuglien can do more of that.
“Eventually they’re going to have to get some size out against that and against some teams, that’s a problem,” the coach said.
Kane update
Evander Kane, hurt three minutes into the season-opener, is back skating on his own now, Maurice said.
Kane will travel with the team this week and his return may be just more than a week away, the team hopes.
“We’ll get him out for some light bumping here and still do the IR skates on his own and then I don’t have a better timeline but he’s ahead of where we hoped he’d be or thought he’d be with the injury and he’s back to skating,” Maurice said. “He’s at least a week away in my mind but he’s coming with the team and he’s skating with the team and I’m hoping by the end of this trip he’s practising with us, whether he’s wearing a non-contact sweater or not.”
tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca
Wheeler saves the day
That’s gotta hurt.
It took many elements for the Winnipeg Jets to claim a 2-1 overtime victory over the Colorado Avalanche on Sunday at the MTS Centre.
An important one came at the north-end net with just one minute left in the extra period.
One of the fastest men in the NHL, at full speed and with defensive urgency, left his feet to reach to tip a puck away from an opponent in a good position to score.
Blake Wheeler batted that puck away to safety in the corner and the price was a major collision with the Jets net, forcing his own goalie Ondrej Pavelec to do a barrell-jump for safety.
No goal for Avs’ Ryan O’Reilly and just a few seconds later, his teammates Andrew Ladd and Bryan Little manufactured the winning score.
“I was a little bit lucky but I hit it,” Wheeler said, referring to the puck he knocked away from his own net. “My head’s fine but I think Pavo might have hit his head harder.
“Thankfully we didn’t hit each other too hard. I was going pretty fast. That was the only thing that was going to stop me, the net, so it was a good, heads-up play by him to get out of the way.”
It was the second narrow escape in their own end for the Jets in overtime, and Pavelec got out of the way on the right one.
“I was a little bit tired after that but Pav’s a pretty big boy and had we run into each other, it might have been a little bit worse,” Wheeler said. “Good that he got out of the way.”
The Jets goalie certainly played a big role in the win, making 22 saves and giving his team a chance to hang around to take the two points.
“It was huge,” Wheeler said. “He made a few big saves. They had a couple of guys behind our D a few times and he stood up and made a couple of big saves. You need big saves to win in this league.
“It’s tough to go 60 minutes and not give up good scoring chances. The other teams get paid to put the puck in the net, too, so he did a good job and stepped up a couple of times we needed him.”
Defence, Wheeler said, is something the Jets were able to improve and refine and it showed Sunday.
“It was one of those games where both sides just clamped down and played good defence,” Wheeler said. “There weren’t a whole lot of scoring chances for or against. Scheifs (Mark Scheifele) had his off the inside of the post there in the third period and if you ge that one to go in you probably get the game.
“So it was nice to see Laddie get a good bounce there. We needed that one.”
tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca
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History
Updated on Sunday, October 26, 2014 7:06 PM CDT: complete game story and sidebar