Jets give fans lump of coal in 6-2 loss to Canadiens

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This article was published 23/12/2019 (2089 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Paul Maurice says the Christmas break couldn’t come soon enough for his club. And you could argue the Winnipeg Jets actually got a jump-start on their holiday, gift-wrapping a 6-2 victory to the visiting Montreal Canadiens on Monday night.

A strong start gave way to a comedy of errors for a Jets team that clearly believes charity begins at home, as evident by 19 giveaways, including a few that ended up in their net. It’s the third straight loss at Bell MTS Place and drops their overall record to 21-14-2. Montreal improves to 18-13-6.

“We won’t be doing any video. We’ll start fresh. Nobody’s carrying that with them. It was a tough night. We’ve had a bunch of good nights. That was a tough one,” the Jets’ head coach said in one of his shortest post-game scrums of the season. “There won’t be an autopsy on this game.”

Patrik Laine appeared to give the Jets a 1-0 lead near the midway mark of the first period, but his beautiful tic-tac-toe goal was wiped out by a successful offside challenge from Montreal. Replays showed Laine, and perhaps linemate Mark Scheifele, were both over the blue line when the puck was brought in.

“It’s a bummer. Those definitely go against us. We gotta put an emphasis on staying onside, I guess. It’s too bad. It was a heck of a goal. Real pretty, great play by those guys. That one hurts to come back,” captain Blake Wheeler said. 

Perhaps that should have been a sign of what was to come, even though Kyle Connor legitimately put the Jets in front a couple minutes later when he scored his 15th of the season at 11:30 of the first period.

It was all downhill from there. 

On the first Montreal goal at 15:06, goaltender Laurent Brossoit appeared to stumble as he tried to slide to his right, leaving Tomas Tatar an open net to score. At 16:38, Scheifele and Connor ran into each other in their own end, leading to an ugly turnover which Tatar quickly took advantage of for his second of the night. 

Intermission didn’t cure what ailed the Jets. In fact, things only got worse.

A puck-handling miscue by Brossoit ended in the back of his net at 4:37 of the second period, with Phillip Danault the lucky recipient. Danault struck again at 8:56 as three Jets bunched together off a faceoff and allowed him to slip in uncontested and beat Brossoit through the five-hole. The Jets had just negated their own power play seconds earlier with the most blatant too-many-men penalty you’ll see, having six skaters on the ice for a prolonged period.

“We like our first. It’s a good hockey game. I’m not saying we’re dominating, but their guy made some saves and it’s a real good hockey game. A tough break at 3-1 and then a couple of mistakes and now you’re reeling a little bit. It snowballed on us a little bit there in the second,” Maurice said. “A couple of tough turnovers — we weren’t good after that. They deserve the win. It’s two points, not 12, fortunately.”

Laine briefly helped stop the bleeding as he beat Carey Price with a wicked wrister at 16:14 of the middle frame, cutting the deficit to 4-2 with his 14th of the year and fifth tally in the past five games.

But the momentum was short-lived, thanks to defenceman Nathan Beaulieu, who coughed up the puck in his own end at the end of a lengthy shift, then ran over Brossoit as he tried to recover from the gaffe, giving Max Domi an easy path to the goal at 19:20.

“Second period was brutal. We got slow. They played well. We weren’t any good in the second. That’s pretty much the story. We tried to come back in the third, but it was a little too late,” defenceman Josh Morrissey said.

“Coming out of the first period, it was a pretty good hockey game. They took it over in the second, and that’s the hockey game.”

The final blunder came at 11:08 of the third period, as a puck rolled off Luca Sbisa’s stick in the neutral zone, giving Montreal an odd-man rush they capitalized on, with Domi feeding a wide-open Artturi Lehkonen for the easy tap-in goal.

Shots end up 48-29 for Montreal and shot attempts were 81-49, an indication of how one-sided this truly was. 

“They were obviously quick. They hemmed us in a little bit in the second period — we weren’t able to get out of our zone. They got a couple good bounces going their way, and all of a sudden, you go from having a really good start to being down a few goals, and it’s an uphill battle,” Wheeler said. 

This is the fourth straight season the Jets have lost their annual home game to Montreal, with the last win coming in 2015. It was a raucous, divided crowd at the start of the night, with hundreds of Habs jerseys visible. By the time the final buzzer went, chants of “Olé, Olé, Olé” were serenading the sad Winnipeg supporters. 

“Full house, good crowd. We came out buzzing,” said Wheeler, who couldn’t pinpoint exactly why things changed so suddenly. “Quick team, just being on the forecheck. We weren’t able to bring it out. You have to give them a lot of credit.” 

The Jets were coming off an impressive 6-0 victory on Saturday afternoon in St. Paul, Minn., against the Wild, hoping to build off the momentum generated by a complete team effort. But with No. 1 goalie Connor Hellebuyck given the night off, Winnipeg looked nothing like the calm, cool and collected group that dominated their red-hot Central Division rival just a couple of days earlier.

They’ll have a few days to stew over this latest effort, as the Jets are now on a holiday break until Friday, when the defending Stanley Cup champion St. Louis Blues come to town to begin a home-and-home series, followed by a New Year’s Eve date in Denver with the high-flying Colorado Avalanche. 

 

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg