Down 2-0, Jets count on huge hand from fans tonight in Game 3

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This article was published 20/04/2015 (3849 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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Their specialty all season has been dealing with the potholes in their way and the blind-side disasters that have threatened to leave them in the ditch.

Here we go again… can the Winnipeg Jets survive another such crisis that threatens to break their will?

The Jets are down 2-0 in the best-of-seven first-round Stanley Cup playoff series, having taken a pair of third-period daggers from the Anaheim Ducks to open the series in California.

Saturday’s Game 2 concluded in a particularly hurtful way, with Jakob Silfverberg’s goal with 21 seconds left in regulation time giving the Ducks a 2-1 triumph.

Now the action switches to the MTS Centre for Game 3 tonight (8 p.m., Sportsnet, TSN 1290) and the Jets don’t have much time to deal with their wounds and try to stake a claim in this series.

“Don’t worry about how I feel,” said Jets defenceman Mark Stuart Sunday, trying to lead the chin-up attitude among his teammates. ” I’ll be OK. I’m a big boy.”

Stuart said he knows how the Jets will deal with matters.

“Same way we always have,” he said. “Put a loss behind us and move on and go after a win.

“It’s the most important time of year. Playoffs is when you want to make things happen. It’s two games. We’re looking that we’re going to have to play seven so we’re going home to turn the series around.”

As much as the team — nearly to a man — is saying it has gone toe-to-toe with the West’s top-seeded Ducks, there was no denying this extra level of adversity in the way the first two games were lost.

“It’s in there,” said Jets coach Paul Maurice, decidedly more conversant Sunday than he was in a smouldering, tight-lipped post-game session on Saturday. “The first thing — don’t cut it off too early. I’m not particularly in a good mood meeting with you here this morning. I’m going to let that hang around for a little while because they’re tight games and it’s just a matter of inches at times, and that’s the frustrating part.

“And you talk about the things that we need to do better, you get your energy back up and you get back home and get excited by the game.”

There’s where veteran winger Drew Stafford saw an opening, that this is what the Jets do so frequently.

“I think we just need to make sure we’re picking each other up,” Stafford said. “I think that character is what got us over the hump and into the playoffs.

“We’re going to lean on that character and the way we’ve handled adversity before this season and carry that over into this situation.”

“This” situation is less than ideal, by games count. But it may be the most exciting, electric hockey night in Winnipeg in more than two decades.

“Don’t worry about how I feel. I’ll be OK. I’m a big boy.”

— Mark Stuart

It has been almost 19 years since the last NHL playoff game in the Manitoba capital, but that playoff series was scarred by the unavoidable dread that no matter the outcome against Detroit, the team was packing for Arizona.

Tonight’s game may in many ways rival the first official game in the league’s return to Winnipeg in October 2011, with emotion and anticipation.

“We know we’ve got a lot of fans that have been waiting a long time to watch playoff hockey and we’re looking forward to getting back in this building and turning this thing around,” Stafford said. “I think it’s going to make a huge difference. We can feed off that energy, use that to our advantage.”

Maurice framed the value like this: “There’s been a number of times this year. We have a real unique opportunity of being able to play on one coast, come home for a game and then get out to the other. There have been a number of games this year that we didn’t have anything in the tank and our crowd drove us through games for some pretty big wins.

“We lean on our crowd an awful lot. The different dynamic in our building is that the fans are loud and the music isn’t. The other places the fans are sort of loud but the music will blow your ears off. We’ve got a great home crowd.”

Lee Stempniak hasn’t had a long time to play in the MTS Centre but grinned Sunday about the return for Game 3.

“That’ll be awesome,” he said. “It’s been a lot of fun ever since I got traded here to be playing in that arena. You could tell the enthusiasm once we clinched, the reception we had coming out for the Calgary game. It should be awesome and everyone’s excited.

“We’ve played well at home. The fans are a huge part of that and we’re looking to turn the series around right there.”

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca