Mason jarred in season opener

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This article was published 04/10/2017 (2903 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Put this baby back up on the hoist and give it a bumper-to-bumper inspection — it looks like the defective parts of the Winnipeg Jets’ game weren’t effectively repaired or replaced over the summer.

Things went dreadfully sideways for the Jets in their 2017-18 NHL season opener Wednesday night at Bell MTS Place. More than just a harmless case of surface rust after six months of NHL inactivity, Wednesday’s 7-2 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs was a complete clunker, with 15,321 rubberneckers watching the breakdown.

Jets sophomore right-winger Patrik Laine was spot on, calling the defeat “embarrassing.”

“It wasn’t the way we wanted to start the season. But it’s done. That’s good news that we have still 81 games left. We just have to be lots better,” said Laine.

“We were just not defending very well. If the opponent scores seven goals, there’s something we did wrong with our defence. But it’s hard to say right now. It’s obviously frustrating because we were practising defence so much. The first regular-season game the opponent scores seven goals, that’s not the ideal start.”

Patrick Marleau, playing his first game as a Leaf after 19 seasons with the San Jose Sharks, had a brilliant debut, firing a pair of goals, while Nazem Kadri, James van Riemsdyk, William Nylander, Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews supplied singles.

Kadri, van Riemsdyk and Nylander all scored within two minutes, 38 seconds late in the opening period.

Jets forwards Mark Scheifele and Mathieu Perreault scored late, with the game well out of reach.

Subpar goaltending? Yes. New guy Steve Mason had a night to forget in his Winnipeg debut.

Mason allowed a couple of softies and, overall, gave up five goals on just 20 shots. He was swapped out for back-up goalie Connor Hellebuyck after Marleau notched his second goal of the game just 36 seconds into the third period.

“It wasn’t what we were looking for. Especially from my standpoint, it just wasn’t good enough,” said Mason, who signed a two-year, $US 8.2-million deal with the Jets on July 1 after four-plus seasons with the Philadelphia Flyers.

“It wasn’t good. We’ll just come back, put it behind me and get ready for the next one.”

Mason, beginning his 10th NHL campaign, was asked if he’d ever been pulled early in a season opener?

“Not that I can remember,” he said. “It’s a bad game, it happens. It sucks when it happens but you put it behind you and get out of it.”

For the record, he really got no help from his teammates.

Shoddy defensive play by the hosts, even after a two-week training camp designed specifically to try and fix what has habitually ailed them? Check.

Defencemen Jacob Trouba and Dustin Byfuglien spent the night chasing down Leafs instead of sticking to whatever plan Jets head coach Paul Maurice has been drawing up on the white board since mid-September. Trouba finished a minus-4, while Byfuglien was minus-2, looking particularly bad on the Nylander goal.

Ineffective special teams? Double-check.

After blazing to a 29.5 per cent efficiency rating (13-for-44) in the pre-season, the Jets’ power-play unit lost its lustre, getting blanked on eight opportunities.

Early on, it totally defused the upbeat mood at sold-out Bell MTS Place, coming away empty on three straight chances before the game was 12 minutes old.

Winnipeg set up shop in Toronto territory for extended stretches and fired plenty of pucks at Frederik Andersen but couldn’t get one past the Danish-born goalie.

The momentum shifted like a tectonic plate below the downtown rink. The Leafs didn’t need three power-play chances, just 45 seconds’ worth of one as Kadri stuffed his own rebound past Mason to open the scoring with just under five minutes left in the first, setting off the three-goal spurt.

“We had a number of power plays and it was doing everything but scoring. And then we took a penalty and kind of let a greasy one in,” said Jets captain Blake Wheeler. “From there, you blink and it’s 3-0. We weren’t able to dig our way out of it.”

Toronto finished 2-for-4 on the power play.

Matthews, van Riemsdyk and Tyler Bozak each had a pair of assists as Toronto led 3-0 and 4-0 at the period breaks.

Maurice said nearly all the fine-tuning done in the pre-season didn’t translate with two NHL points on the line.

“Yeah, just all of them,” he said, dryly. “The power play wasn’t as bad as the number will tell. Their goalie was good. I’m not saying that’s the game. So, that part was good. The rest of it wasn’t.

“We did it to ourselves on some of them. The third goal (Nylander) is a reasonably easy read to make if you’re thinking about defending at that point. But we’re thinking about let’s get it back as fast as we can, and that is a bit of a holdover concept. And that’s how you get in trouble. Relax, patience. But we blew the zone on that and got in real trouble with it.”

Hellebuyck stopped nine of 11 shots. He surrendered Marner’s power-play goal midway through the final frame and couldn’t handle a great tip-in by Matthews, named the NHL’s rookie of the year over Laine of the Jets and Columbus blue-liner Zach Werenski last season.

In contrast, Andersen was exceptional, particularly in the opening period when the Jets tested him 15 times, including a couple of open looks and deflections through traffic.

The Leafs netminder finished with 35 saves.

Maurice elected to give centre Nic Petan and defencemen Ben Chiarot and rookie Tucker Poolman an evening off to watch from the press box.

The Jets practise at home Thursday and Friday, and then depart on a three-game Western Canada road trip.

Winnipeg takes on Calgary’s newest foward, the venerable Jaromir Jagr, and the rest of the Flames on Saturday night, hooks up with the Connor McDavid-led Edmonton Oilers on Thanksgiving Monday and rounds out the swing west with a battle Thursday against the Vancouver Canucks.

jason.bell@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @WFPJasonBell