Jets face identity crisis after Avalanche rally to win 6-3

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This article was published 26/02/2022 (1336 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DENVER – In a season that’s had far more lows than highs, the Winnipeg Jets are on the brink of hitting rock bottom.

Up 3-0 on the NHL-leading Colorado Avalanche through 20 minutes, in what might have been the Jets best period all season, they would completely fall apart in the final two periods, allowing six unanswered goals to fall 6-3 in front 18,037 at Ball Arena Friday night.

The Jets are now 22-21-9 on the season, and 0-2-1 on their current four-game road trip, which wraps up in Arizona against the lowly Coyotes Sunday afternoon. Meanwhile, the Avalanche continue to roll, improving to 38-10-4, a record that has them atop the NHL standings.

“If you look at the best teams in the NHL, they don’t always play their A-game. There are nights that they’re not the best with the puck, there’s nights they don’t have their best legs. But they can fall back on things that they do well, and they do it consistently,” said Jets centre Pierre-Luc Dubois, who had two assists.

“Consistency of the team and consistency of the players is two different things. But I think if we have an identity to fall back on every night, you know what kind of team is going to show up for us. That’s when you have consistency. You lose some, but if you play to your identity, if you have an identity and you play to it, you’ll lose some games, but you’ll win some when you don’t even play well. And I think we’re still trying to find what our identity is here, and that’s what’s hurting us.”

The Jets continue to make their road to the NHL playoffs a bumpy one and have just 30 games remaining in the season to get things back on track. They currently sit six points back of the Edmonton Oilers and Dallas Stars for the final Western Conference playoff spot, with the Vancouver Canucks and Anaheim Ducks also ahead of them in the standings but outside the playoff line.

The irony in Winnipeg’s playoff pursuit is if the Jets do somehow manage find a way to turn things around, their reward will very likely be a first-round matchup with the Avalanche.

In two games against Colorado this season, the Jets have been outscored 13-4, including a 7-1 drubbing back on Jan. 6. In that first game, Winnipeg scored the game’s opening goal, only to give up the next seven.

A lack of consistency has been a reoccurring theme for the Jets this season. They’ve struggled to string together full-game efforts or any notable win streaks, winning consecutive games just twice in a 22-game stretch since the calendar flipped to 2022.

“Good teams, great teams, they have an identity. They have a game plan regardless of whether they’re up 3-0, they’re down 3-0. We’re still searching for that and that’s frustrating,” Lowry said, echoing the same sentiment as Dubois. “When it’s 52 games into the season, you want to have something concrete to go back on and that’s on all of us to, not just get up and if the game’s going well we keep playing well or when the game’s going badly, we sulk. You saw the Avs. They didn’t start cheating the game. They stuck with it. They generate a lot off the rush. They generate a lot with their big guns. As the game went on, we got away from that and you saw the end result.”

Indeed, Colorado’s big guns were certainly firing on all cylinders.

Captain Gabriel Landeskog finished the game with a hat trick — his first goal getting the Avalanche on the board, his second tying the game 3-3 late in the second period and his third being the sixth and final goal, providing the proverbial exclamation mark on the night. Alternate captains Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen combined for five points, with MacKinnon scoring twice and Rantanen adding three assists.

As for the Jets leadership group, captain Blake Wheeler and alternate captains Mark Scheifele and Josh Morrissey each finished minus-4. Wheeler and Scheifele were particularly invisible, generating few scoring opportunities and combining for just three shots. Morrissey had one assist.

Part of the Jets lack of consistency — and a big reason why they aren’t generating win streaks — is because when one of top lines is going, the other often isn’t. On Friday, it was the Kyle Connor-Dubois-Evgeny Svechnikov line that was rolling, combining for the first two goals. Lowry added the third goal on a pretty, short-handed marker with 3:34 remaining in the first.

Interim head coach Dave Lowry was asked if he had any thoughts on why his weapons on offence struggle to find their rhythm on the same night.

“I wish I had the answer,” he said. “I thought Doobie’s line was extremely…they played a very good game. Disappointing part is we didn’t get the result we were looking for.”

As for the player’s remarks in having trouble establishing an identity this late in the season, coach Lowry noted it’s not that they don’t have one, they just aren’t executing it. And with the season running down, they need to figure that out sooner than later.

“We should know what our identity is. We’ve played it. It is a team that is going to play hard, a team that is going to play quick” he said. “You saw it in the first period. You’ve seen it in a lot of games that we’ve won. We’ve had emotion, we’ve had a direct plan going through the neutral zone and playing fast.”

The Jets followed an ugly second period with an equally forgettable third. Andre Burakovsky provided the game winner just 56 seconds into the final frame, beating Connor Hellebuyck with a wrister glove side.

It was the kind of shot — low and and a clear view of the shooter — that needs to be made by Hellebuyck, who finished with 36 saves. Pavel Francouz rebounded from a rough first period, ending the night with 26 saves and the victory.

After the Coyotes on Sunday, the Jets return home for a crucial four-game homestand, beginning with the Montreal Canadiens Mar. 1.

“It’s pretty darn close to must-win in Arizona,” Adam Lowry said. “It’s frustrating. Guys are frustrated, for sure, but being a professional athlete, as cliche as it is, you have to have a short-term memory.”

Jeff.Hamilton@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @jeffkhamilton