Sultan of Stops clips Jets’ wings

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/11/2016 (3270 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Winnipeg Jets needed to be lucky or almost perfect to beat Devan Dubnyk Wednesday night.

Unfortunately for the visitors, they couldn’t catch a break when they needed it most and Dubnyk, the 30-year-old Sultan of Stops, was nearly unbeatable as the Minnesota Wild posted a 3-1 triumph over the Jets before 19,002 fans at the Xcel Energy Center.

A coach’s challenge, which resulted in a reversal of a goal scored by Winnipeg’s Blake Wheeler at 9:54 of the third period was a backbreaker. Wheeler’s perfect deflection of a Toby Enstrom shot was disallowed when Nikolaj Ehlers was judged to have been offside as Wheeler was carrying the puck over the blue line.

The goal would have tied the game 1-1.

“I felt like I was close but I felt I still had my skate in the blue paint while he was taking it over,” said Ehlers. “That’s it, we can’t doing anything about it now.”

Wheeler, who scored less than three minutes later to pull the Jets to within 2-1 after Jonas Brodin had given the Wild a 2-0 edge on a deflected power-play goal, admitted the review was correct. 

“It looked like he was offside,” said Wheeler. “I didn’t get a real good look at the replay… but based on what they showed on the JumboTron it looked like his heel was up. They have to have irrefutable evidence to reverse the call and I guess they got it.”

The Jets, who fell to 9-11-2 overall, have now lost four consecutive games on their season-long five-game road trip. They’ll try to pull out a victory Friday night in Nashville against the Predators. 

Mikko Koivu, in the first period, and Zach Parise, into an empty net, coming directly as a result of Patrik Laine’s stick breaking in the final minute of regulation, also scored for the Wild. Minnesota improved to 10-7-2.

Connor Hellebuyck was sharp in the Winnipeg net, making 23 saves.

“I thought we did a lot of good things tonight,” said rookie Jets defenceman Josh Morrissey. “Obviously, a couple of errors and untimely breaks. That’s something we can build on. We worked pretty hard for a full 60 minutes.”

Dubnyk, who got a rare night off in Dallas Monday, had been astonishing with league-leading four shutouts, a 1.59 goals-against average and a .948 save percentage entering Wednesday’s action.

His modest 8-6-1 record is due mainly to Minnesota’s inability to score goals. In Dubnyk’s 15 starts, Minnesota has scored 37 goals. In five of those games, they have scored one goal or fewer.

“I think we had a lot of O-zone time,” said Morrissey. “They’re a shot-blocking team. They knock a lot of pucks down and it’s hard to get pucks through from the point, especially, so in the third period we put a few more at his feet… They do a pretty good job of protecting that house area for sure.”

Jets head coach Paul Maurice was disappointed but hopeful.

“It was a hard-fought game,” said Maurice. “There were only moments of open play really. Both teams were competing pretty hard on that puck and it was hard to get pucks to the net. The margin for error was real small.”

Big line flying again

The trio of Mark Scheifele, Wheeler and Ehlers had plenty of jump but not enough to show for their territorial dominance.

Scheifele had one of Winnipeg’s best opportunities to score in the first minute of the second period after being fed by Wheeler on a 2-on-1 break. Scheifele’s quick one-timer was denied by Dubnyk.

“We didn’t generate necessarily the amount of shots we wanted to,” said Wheeler. “Some of the looks we got were really good looks, we played with the puck in their zone a decent amount… That’s kinda the way it felt… You get one to tie the game up and you start thinking about getting at worst a point in a tough building. It gets called back and then there second goal is a pretty good bounce for them, so it just wasn’t meant to be.”

Noteworthy

Right-winger Drew Stafford returned to Winnipeg’s lineup after missing 15 games on the injured reserve. Stafford acquitted himself well with 13:51 of ice time and two shots on net… Winnipeg’s power play went 1-for-2 while the Wild were 1-for-3… Minnesota’s held a tremendous edge in the faceoff circle, winning 31 of 47 draws for a 66 per cent success rate. Koivu was a stellar 13 of 16 (81 per cent) while Scheifele went two of 12 (17 per cent).

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @sawa14