Jets down worn-out Jackets

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This article was published 31/10/2015 (3609 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — If you subscribe to the NHL theory playing on consecutive nights will involve some weariness on Night No. 2, then the Winnipeg Jets used just enough of the textbook Saturday night on how to take advantage.

With the Columbus Blue Jackets having lost 2-1 in Washington Friday, the Jets surged out to three first-period goals and made them stand up for a 3-2 win over the Jackets before 12,860 at Nationwide Arena.

Winnipeg led for 54 minutes and eight seconds, establishing an early 2-0 lead on goals 53 seconds apart by Bryan Little and Andrew Copp — his first in the NHL — and really didn’t have a lot of trouble putting a seventh win in the bank on the 2015-16 season.

The decision put the Jets at 7-3-1 at the start of this four-game road trip through the east.

Jackets new coach John Tortorella dismissed the weariness theory after the defeat put the team to 2-3-0 under his watch and now 2-10-0 on the season, saying the club’s greater woes currently prevail.

“It was struggle for us all night long in all facets, let’s be honest,” Tortorella said.

The Jets had something to do with that, skating well early and limiting Columbus’s shot total to 21, second-lowest number against on their chart this season.

The visitors were most frustrating to play against during a third-period, four-minute high-sticking penalty to defenceman Mark Stuart. The only thing the Jackets got out of it was booing from the home fans.

Leaders lead: Wheeler and Little each had two first-period points, demonstrating a take-charge kind of game.

Wheeler’s hot start to the season continues, now with a team-leading 14 points in 11 games.

Little’s not far behind with 11 points, and he’s now got nine points in nine lifetime games against Columbus.

The inconsistency: In their previous two games at home, penalties were pretty much a non-factor in the game as referees loosened their standards and let the teams go at it.

Saturday, the magnifying glass returned to the ice as marginal things were once again penalties — an inconsistency that turns players into grumblers.

Winnipeg had five Columbus power plays to kill, getting a perfect mark for that, though Brandon Saad’s first-period goal came just two seconds after an Anthony Peluso boarding penalty had expired.

On the board: The hostilities that are verablized on the ice are rarely revealed, so we don’t know what sparked Peluso and Columbus’s Jared Boll to square off during the second period.

There was no grand incident that provoked either man, but however it began, it goes into the books as the first fighting major for the Jets this season.

Much improved: In collecting their third win in the last four games, the Jets are making headway in what has been a chronically poor department — faceoffs.

Only a week ago, Winnipeg was the NHL’s worst faceoff team, but in the past four outings, it has put up percentages of 55, 53, 54 and 56 on Saturday night to start the move towards respectability in this area.

The Jets are now 23rd in the NHL at 48.5 per cent on the season.

A rotation? The November schedule suggests Jets coach Paul Maurice is going to need both goalies.

To start this road trip, he went back to Ondrej Pavelec, despite Michael Hutchinson’s 4-0 record, and Pavelec gave him a solid road game, beaten only by Saad’s quasi-power-play tip and a Scott Hartnell shot at 18:46 of the third while the Jackets had their goalie lifted for the extra attacker.

Pavelec improved his record this season to 3-3-1.

Best guess will put Hutchinson in the net Sunday when the road trip continues in Montreal.

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca