Maurice has close eye on Jets lines heading into road games
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/11/2014 (3967 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Mindful that Thursday is U.S. Thanksgiving, a date commonly used to show a high statistical probability that if you’re in an NHL playoff spot, you’ll eventually get one, Winnipeg Jets coach Paul Maurice said today he’d prefer more than one target date.
“Pick your holiday,” Maurice said, his team only one point off a Western Conference wild-card berth and two points out of an automatic spot from the Central Division. “You’ve got to be pretty close to that top eight to stay in the fight all the way through. There’s not a lot of room to get a big gap between you and the other teams.”
Through 22 games of the NHL season, the Jets are 10-9-3 as they head off for three more road games this week, starting Tuesday night in Columbus.
“We’re going to come off the day after Thanksgiving having 15 on the road and 10 at home,” the coach said. “And we’re hoping that’s turned out to be a good thing because we’ve played pretty darn well on the road (6-4-2 so far). I think seven of the 10 home games we’ve played have been against playoff teams.
“It’s been a while since I really disliked a game — Calgary (Oct. 19). When I look at the five regulation losses we suffered… you’re not winning all those games or you’d be sitting 22-0. Our losses have not been out-of-the-gate-slow-and-never-recovered by any means.
“We’re in the fight night now.”
The Jets are coming off back-to-back losses in regulation at home, against Detroit and St. Louis. In those games, Winnipeg gave up four goals, the first time this season that’s happened in back-to-back outings.
Sunday, Maurice wondered aloud if having changed his lines earlier in the week was causing the team to give up too much defensively even if it sparked a little more offence.
He said another wave of line-changing might be coming soon, but wouldn’t specify when.
“I’ve got the next place we’re going to go with the lines,” he said. “But that being said, two good opponents, a lead with one and tied with one going in to the third. So it’s not a matter of being outplayed.
“By lines, (Bryan) Little’s is plus-one over three games. Is that enough? It is if (Travis) Zajac’s zero and (Henrik) Zetterberg’s a zero and (Jori) Lehtera’s a zero. (Mathieu) Perreault’s line had four in their last seven periods going into last night. So there’s something there we still like.
“And same with the (Mark) Scheifele group and (Jim) Slater’s line got a goal. So there’s enough good there to leave it for a while. The question is, ‘Is a while already come?’ We’ll watch that closely.
“But you’re looking more probably at in-game changes than necessarily deciding you didn’t like what you saw and change it in practice.”
tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca
