Jets can’t climb out of early hole in 4-0 loss to Canucks

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This article was published 01/03/2021 (1652 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Wayne Gretzky famously said, “You miss 100 per cent of the shots you don’t take.” The Winnipeg Jets would have been wise to heed those words Monday night as they got far too cute for their own good in a lacklustre 4-0 loss to the Vancouver Canucks at Bell MTS Place.

Thatcher Demko’s first career shutout was a relatively easy one, with just 27 pucks coming his way. Fifteen of those were in the third period when the game was basically out of reach and the visitors were content to just sit back. Up to that point, Winnipeg had repeatedly passed its way out of some prime scoring chances, seemingly trying to make every play of the highlight-reel variety.

There was Nikolaj Ehlers inexplicably breaking up a two-on-one with Kyle Connor by trying a silly between-the-legs feed that pretty much turned into a harmless dump-in. There was captain Blake Wheeler seemingly having a gaping cage, only to dish it instead to a surprised Mark Scheifele. And there was far too much perimeter play, with the visitors happy to give Winnipeg some zone time that led to absolutely nothing.

“Quite honestly I think we generated some opportunities that just didn’t connect; we didn’t fire on a few of them. I had a few opportunities to let it fly and wanted to be a passer. Especially when you are down a few goals you’ve gotta have a shooter’s mentality,” said Wheeler.

“You gotta be assertive when you do have those chances because they are obviously sitting back and protecting a lead. We were one shot away from having an opportunity to get back into it. It just never came.”

No, it didn’t, and the NHL’s best comeback team — Winnipeg is 6-2-0 when trailing after the first period this year — went down quietly, ushering in a busy month of March like a lamb instead of a lion.

Winnipeg falls to 13-7-1 as their four-game winning streak comes to a halt. Vancouver, which began the night winless in their past four, improves to 9-14-2.

“We’d like to start from a shooting mentality. We talked about that from the start of the season, wanting to think like a shooter when you have the puck and then the creativity and the seam or the backdoor plays will show up and you’ll see those. We’ve got good players here to see those. I think we can get back to a little bit,” said defenceman Josh Morrissey.

The Jets are the third-highest-scoring team in the NHL, trailing only Toronto and Tampa, so it’s tough to take them to task in that department. But this was a puzzling strategy for at least one night, especially after they watched their opponent score three times in the opening period courtesy of relatively harmless point shots that got re-directed past Connor Hellebuyck.

The first two, just 18 seconds apart, came off the stick of Canucks defenceman Nate Schmidt. His first deflected off Jets forward Andrew Copp and into the back of Winnipeg’s net, the second off teammate J.T. Miller. The third, a few minutes later, came on a power play when Nils Hoglander tipped a Tyler Myers blast.

“That’s just the way the game goes sometimes. Sometimes the bounces are going to go your way, sometimes they’re not and that’s where you can’t beat yourself up about it. You’ve got to keep playing,” Scheifele said of the early 3-0 hole.

Which is why the second period was so surprising, and alarming. A team that has routinely pushed back and erased deficits generated only five shots in the middle frame, and a dozen total through 40 minutes. The only thing Winnipeg was shooting was itself in the foot.

“There is no question that probably over the last couple of games that has started to creep into our game a little bit, being a little less assertive in those scoring areas. We just gotta change our mindset; that’s kind of what was missing a little bit. Obviously, their goals were what they were, and there’s not a lot that our goalie can do about that. He stopped the ones he could see, and obviously he’s going do that every single night,” said Wheeler.

Indeed, this actually goes back to Saturday’s 2-1 overtime victory over Montreal, in which the Jets generated only 21 shots (Montreal had 41) and only escaped with two points due to Hellebuyck’s heroics. The first goal was scored on the power play, the winner at three-on-three, meaning they’ve now gone six periods without an even-strength tally.

“That was the big concern. We’ve been able to push back and get pucks to the net and it wasn’t there for us tonight. I thought that (second) period looked like the four prior periods. We didn’t have a lot going offensively,” said Jets coach Paul Maurice.

“And, credit to their team, they did a bunch of good things, and Montreal did a bunch of good things. But we feel there’s a whole lot of places we can generate more that we’re not really thinking about right now. But we will.”

There’s not a lot of time to figure it out, as the two teams will face-off again on Tuesday night. It’s their fifth meeting of the season, with the road team winning the first four.

Vancouver was coming off a horrific February in which they went 2-9-2 to fall out of the playoff conversation in the North Division. If they’re going to get back in the race, they need to string some wins together, and fast.

The Jets, meanwhile, were seeking their first five game winning streak since December 2018.

Vancouver finished with just 19 shots, with the last one being courtesy of Elias Pettersson into an empty net with just under four minutes to play.

Maurice juggled his lines during the game, moving Pierre-Luc Dubois back to his natural centre position to skate with Connor and Ehlers, and moving Paul Stastny to the wing to play with Scheifele and Dubois.

“We started to get a few O-zone shifts, a few shots from the D, into that that third period and that was a little more like our game,” said Scheifele. “We’ve just got to bring that for the whole game (Tuesday).”

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg