Defensively tidy Jets on hot streak

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This article was published 19/11/2014 (3964 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Life is good in Jetville these days. There are smiles everywhere and back slaps aplenty.

Little wonder: an 8-2-3 run since an early-season stumble — coupled with the buy-in to the defensive blueprint used by coach Paul Maurice & Co. — has the Jets heading into work daily with a little more hop in their collective step.

But when the subject of the team’s anemic power play is broached, heads get shaken in disgust or — as was the case following Tuesday’s win over the New Jersey Devils — Maurice is making cracks about the unit’s ineptitude.

(No truth to the rumour the Jets will petition the league’s board of governors for a new rule that would give a team the right to decline a power play).

“The interesting part about it is it’s never as bad as it seems and it’s never as good as it feels sometimes,” said Maurice after his team had an off-ice workout and optional skate at MTS Iceplex today. “We’re fourth in the league for shots on goal on our power play… so it’s a little bit like our five-on-five offence: the puck is getting to the net, what we need to work on and develop is how we’re getting those pucks to the net and where we’re positioned off the shots.

“Our last two games our power play hasn’t looked good.”

In the Jets’ 3-1 win over New Jersey the power play was 0-5 and in Sunday’s 4-3 OT loss to Minnesota it was a woeful 0-for-8, including 90 seconds with a two-man advantage. But the woes date back further than that. Winnipeg has now gone five games without a power-play goal, a stretch of 18 chances.

After Tuesday’s win over the Devils, Maurice talked about changing the mindset on the power play. A day later, he expanded on that theory.

“Confidence is everything, right? In all walks of life. And it’s not an overly-confident group right now. You can’t have your power play taking away from your five-on-five game and two of the best chances we gave up last night were right after a power play because there’s that frustration building.

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“What has to change is how we’re delivering the puck to the net. We’re getting it to the net. So, there’s the standard coach’s line of ‘We’ve got to shoot the puck more.’ Our shot attempts were over 200 on our power plays, but just slightly over 50 per cent are actually getting to the net. We’re missing the net and we’re getting an awful lot blocked. How we’re getting the pucks (to the net) has got to change a little bit. But all that… we’re talking about a half foot in just about everything you do out there. It’s the quickness that comes, part of it from confidence, part of it is an intensity level. And then a big part of it is the timing and the structure of it. We’ve really fallen off in the last two games with the structure of it… a shot gets to the net and somebody is two feet off the post instead of being right in front.

“That’s what we’ll work on.”

The Jets, now 10-7-3 this season, continue their three-game homestand Thursday night against the Detroit Red Wings. Asked if he planned to use the same lines against the Wings — remember, Wednesday’s skate was optional — Maurice grinned and said “Yup. We’ll start that way.”

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPEdTait