Doin’ it right: Jets finally starting to play style of game that gets points

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This article was published 16/01/2016 (3554 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. PAUL, Minn — Blake Wheeler called it the perfect road game. Mathieu Perreault felt it injected life into the locker-room. Paul Maurice said he could talk about the play of every guy on his team — and he almost did.

“That’s usually a good sign,” said the Jets coach.

From every vantage point, the 1-0 shutout win over the Minnesota Wild at Xcel Energy Center Friday night offered another monster boost for a Jets team that earlier this week was beginning to question its fight. Down a few keys pieces — Mark Scheifele, Drew Stafford and Adam Lowry were out with injuries — and at the end of games on back-to-back nights, two points against a divisional rival wasn’t the only thing the Jets brought back with them. The game also provided a blueprint for success, a desperately needed template of what it takes to win.

“I think just identifying what we need to bring to the rink every night, to have that kind of effort,” said right-winger Wheeler, who once again rose to the occasion Friday night, scoring his second game-winning goal in as many days. “If we would have lost both of these games it would have been really tough to swallow, but at least we would have had a game we can relate to and play every night.”

That’s not to suggest the last 48 hours had been perfect for the Jets. In both the 5-4 overtime win against Nashville in Winnipeg Thursday and again in Minny Friday, a simple bounce the other way could have left the Jets on the wrong side. Against the Predators, they built up a 4-1 lead only to lose it in the third period before Wheeler’s goal in overtime sealed the win. Friday, an Alexander Burmistrov tripping penalty on Wild captain Mikko Koivu late in the game could have proved disastrous had the Jets not willed their way to victory by putting their bodies on the line.

As imperfect as the two victories were, it’s exactly the kind of setting the Jets thrived in last year; a year in which they set a franchise record for points with 99 and punched their ticket to the playoffs for the first time since the rebirth of NHL hockey in Winnipeg. Adversity, it would seem, brings out the best in the Jets.

“Sometimes you need that adversity to get the guys to realize that now we got to go,” Perreault said. “Sometimes it just brings the best out of guys and we saw that (Friday).”

It was also seen last season when the Jets were decimated by injuries on the blue-line but were able to prevail. Getting through similar adversity Friday has the dressing room feeling good and the future bright.

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“We kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel and we feel like now we can do this,” Perreault added. “We’ve been battling through so many things and a divisional game win, it’s just huge. We lose those two games who knows where we’re sitting, but now we’re right there, so it’s a great feeling.”

Maurice wasn’t ready to declare Friday’s win a rallying point just yet. After all, the Jets still have a lot to prove. They remain last in the Central Division with a 21-21-3 record, still in the chase for that final playoff wild-card spot. But he does like the journey his team has taken in the last week, and looks forward to the ride ahead.

“It feels like it’s right,” said Maurice. “The leadership in our room deserves an awful lot of credit, in a tough emotional setting after those two home losses, for getting that ship right.”

jeff.hamilton@freepress.mb.ca

twitter: @jeffkhamilton

Jeff Hamilton
Multimedia producer

Jeff Hamilton is a sports and investigative reporter. Jeff joined the Free Press newsroom in April 2015, and has been covering the local sports scene since graduating from Carleton University’s journalism program in 2012. Read more about Jeff.

Every piece of reporting Jeff produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.