Too little too late for Jets in meaningless 4-1 win over Avalanche

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This article was published 24/04/2022 (1231 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s too little, too late to have any meaningful impact this season. But the Winnipeg Jets served up a reminder Sunday night that they can still be a solid hockey team — not to mention an entertaining one — when firing on all cylinders.

Now the trick is to find a way to bottle what they did in a 4-1 victory over Colorado at Canada Life Centre and make it the norm, rather than the exception. The Jets improve to 36-32-11. The Avalanche fall to 55-18-6, now having dropped three straight in regulation.

After two scoreless periods, the Western Conference-leading visitors opened the scoring early in the final frame. And, given Winnipeg’s recent track record which included four straight losses and official playoff elimination heading into this one, you’d be forgiven for thinking the floodgates were about to open.

They did, actually. But for the home team, which exploded for three goals in 201 seconds, then added a fourth for good measure a few minutes later to cap off an impressive comeback victory in front of 14,443 fans.

“I thought we played a really good game. We were solid in our details, we just grinded it out until the opportunity was there,” said goaltender Connor Hellebuyck. “That’s the firing power we have in this locker room. We can score at any moment.”

The win was especially sweet for Hellebuyck, who is coming off a miserable stretch. He was pulled in back-to-back outings in Florida last weekend after giving up 11 goals total. That was followed by missing the next two games in New York and Carolina as a result of a non-COVID illness. But he was back in the net Sunday, surpassing Ondrej Pavelec for the all-time franchise lead in games played with 380.

“It just shows you what he’s all about, the type of character that he has,” said interim coach Dave Lowry. “He wanted to be in the net tonight. He made it perfectly clear that he was ready to play and he wanted to be in the net and that he’s earned that opportunity to play.”

Hellebuyck was given a warm ovation early in the game for his accomplishment, then followed that up by recording the 200th win of his career.

“It just shows that the fans appreciate everything I’ve accomplished here with them,” said Hellebuyck, who is in his seventh season. “I’m glad to call Winnipeg my home these past few years and look forward to some more,” said Hellebuyck.

It looked like Hellebuyck might be in for a hard-luck loss after J.T. Compher opened the scoring at 5:03 of the third period, the result of some broken coverage by defenceman Logan Stanley who abandoned his position and left the Avalanche forward wide open off the rush.

Meanwhile, Darcy Kuemper was stopping everything at the other end, denying the first 33 Winnipeg shots he faced. But all of that changed near the midway mark.

Adam Lowry tied it at 9:04 when he deflected Josh Morrissey’s point shot. His 13th goal of the year came one period after his breakaway attempt on Kuemper ended with him hitting the post after trying a dazzling one-handed deke.

“Pretty sick,” is how Kyle Connor described the attempt Peter Forsberg made famous. “I think he wanted to score that one pretty bad. We were all cheering for him. I was telling him he needs to do that one more coming from the right side. He’s got such a long reach. He is able to pull that off. He’s obviously got the backhand five-hole down pat. It would have been cool if he had scored that. He’s got some hands in tight. We’ve seen it all year.”

Captain Blake Wheeler got what turned out to the game-winner at 10:23, once again on a net-front deflection. Dylan Samberg’s shot hit a mass of humanity in front of the Colorado net and bounced right to Wheeler, who buried his 14th of the year.

Connor then made a little history at 12:25 when he scored his team-leading 45th of the year, which establishes a new Jets 2.0 single-season record that he previously shared with Patrik Laine (44 goals during the 2017-18 season). Jansen Harkins, bumped up to play on a line with Connor and Pierre-Luc Dubois, picked off a clearing attempt at the Avalanche blue-line and fed a wide-open Connor.

“It’s a pretty cool achievement,” said the 23-year-old Connor. “There’s a lot of good players that have come through this organization, a lot of talent, a lot of skill. It’s even better to get a win here tonight, too.”

Nikolaj Ehlers finished off the scoring at 16:18 when he notched his 27th of the year.

“Well I thought we had a lot of really good chances. Give Kuemper credit. He made some big saves,” said Lowry. “I really thought we stayed with what we were doing, with what we talked about. We wanted to get inside, we wanted to attack, we wanted to force them to have to fight through some traffic. Our first goal is a deflection with guys in and around the net. You know, sometimes they’re not the prettiest, but it’s effective.”

Jets defenceman Nate Schmidt and forward Zach Sanford both missed the game with ailments suffered last Thursday, joining Mark Scheifele and Cole Perfetti on the injured list. Stanley, and Adam Brooks, took their spots in the lineup. Colorado was without three key players due to injury and illness in Gabriel Landeskog, Mikko Rantanen and Devon Toews.

Nathan MacKinnon had torched Winnipeg with four goals, five assists and 33 combined shots in the first three head-to-head meetings of the year, all won by Colorado. But the Jets smothered him with a blanket in this one, limiting him to just two shots and no points.

“We talked about it, the way that you have to play these top guys is that you have to get into them early, you have to take away their time and space. You have to make them get rid of the puck,” said Lowry.

“He’s a lot like McDavid, where their speed with the puck coming through the neutral zone, the way they attack, really backs teams off. And if you get the puck out of his hand early, and then you can take away his time and space and make it hard for him to get into areas and then he has to play through guy. I thought tonight we did a really good job of doing that and really minimizing his opportunities. He’s a star player and he’s going to get chances. I thought tonight we did a really good job of taking away time and space.”

Winnipeg will now try to close out this season in style with three more games on home ice, beginning Wednesday with a visit from Philadelphia. Calgary comes to town Friday, and then Seattle closes out the campaign on Sunday afternoon.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg