Morrissey scores OT winner after Jets give up late lead… again

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/11/2022 (1018 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DALLAS — Incredibly, it was deja vu all over again Friday night in Dallas.

The Winnipeg Jets, holding a two-goal lead in the waning minutes of the game, saw the Stars score twice in regulation with the goalie pulled for an extra attacker, only for Josh Morrissey to win it 5-4 on an overtime breakaway.

Flash all the way back to last Monday, where the same Jets, holding a three-goal lead over the Carolina Hurricanes in the waning minutes of the game, saw their opponent score three times in regulation with the goalie pulled for an extra attacker, only for Morrissey to win it 4-3 on an overtime breakaway.

“Oh my God, you’ve gotta love him. Did you see him skating there at the end? He was flat out flying,” said Jets coach Rick Bowness.

“He’s just been great for us all year. And when you get him into a foot race, then look out. He’s just been outstanding for us all year. That was pretty exciting. You could just see him pulling away, and you knew he was going to get a shot away. And that just looked like a goal scorer walking in, those last two overtimes.”

Seriously, you couldn’t make this kind of stuff up. And the controversial way this one extended beyond three periods will be a talking point for quite some time.

Winnipeg improves to 12-6-1 and move into sole possession of second place in the Central Division. They are three points back of first-place Dallas (12-5-4) with two games in hand, and have now beaten the Stars in two of three head-to-head meetings this year.

Cole Perfetti (4th), Jansen Harkins (1st), Adam Lowry (4th) and Kyle Connor (7th) scored in regulation for the visitors. NHL goal-scoring leader Jason Robertson had a pair for the home team, while Wyatt Johnston and Jamie Benn had the others. Connor Hellebuyck finished with 37 saves on 41 shots, while Jake Oettinger stopped 23 of 28 pucks that came his way,

A sign of a good team is the ability to quickly move on from a disappointing effort, learn from your many mistakes and get back to the basics. Mission largely accomplished for Jets, who erased the stink of Wednesday’s 6-1 loss in Minnesota with an impressive workmanlike effort.

“None of us played well. Over the course of the season you’re going to have a lot of off nights and that was an off night. We turned the page pretty quick,” said Jets forward Blake Wheeler.

Here’s a breakdown of what we saw from the press box:

1) Hellebuyck has every right to be furious. After Robertson had cut the lead to 4-3 with just over two minutes left in regulation, he struck again with 20 seconds remaining to tie the game. Hellebuyck never saw the puck go in the net — he was laying, face down, without his helmet, after being bowled over by Benn in his crease.

Officials somehow let the play continue, even though a netminder with exposed flesh should constitute the play being blown dead. The Jets challenged the good goal call, on the basis of interference, but were rejected when the NHL situation room actually blamed Morrissey for propelling Benn into Hellebuyck.

“Obviously I hit Benn, as a result he goes into Bucky. But I don’t see a reality where the goalie can have no helmet on and a goal be allowed three seconds after,” said Morrissey.

“If that’s the rule, that’s the rule. I just don’t see how that’s, for player safety, he’s lying on the ice without a helmet on in front of the net. If he takes a shot off the face that’s an extremely dangerous situation. So it’s pretty cut and dry to me. Goalie’s helmet comes off, whether or not I push a guy into him – and again it’s a few seconds later – so I don’t understand the call there. But we found a way to get two points.”

Adding to the chaos is the fact somehow Hellebuyck was allowed to remain in the game and not pulled by the concussion spotters, even though he clearly was holding his head and needed to be checked out by training staff during the lengthy delay.

What a mess.

“Chevy (general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff) is on it, so I’m as confused as anybody. I gotta be careful what I say,” said Bowness.

2) Kudos to the Jets for quickly regaining their composure, with Wheeler sending Morrissey in all alone on Jake Oettinger to end the madness just 34 seconds into the final frame. It was Wheeler’s second helper of the night, and quite the way to celebrate becoming the franchise’s all-time leader in games played. He passed former teammate Bryan Little for that Atlanta Thrashers/Jets 2.0 honour by skating in his 844th game.

“Lows (Adam Lowry) did a great job helping me in the corner there and broke the puck up. And J-Mo is an elite skater. You get him into open space and he’s a handful,” Wheeler said of the dramatic winner.

Morrissey continues his red-hot start, and is now up to a team-leading 20 points through 19 games.

“Like we said after the Carolina game. We played a really good 50, we might have made it to 57 minutes tonight. It’s the resilience in our team. We have a lot of pride and we’ve committed to playing a certain style of game this year,” said Morrissey.

“We didn’t do that in Minnesota. If you’re not up for a game against a team that we’re chasing and trying to catch in the standings, a division rival, that was huge. We knew we had to be ready. It was a big two points for us.”

3) This was not a good night for the men in stripes.

For starters, there were at least three occasions where the two referees got in the way of pucks, to the point it actually turned play in the other direction. That’s never a good thing. Then, in the second period, a puck clearly went out of play and hit the netting, then fell back to the ice surface where Robertson fired it into the Winnipeg net, thinking he’d just snapped a 2-2 tie and given his team its first lead of the night,

It was the easiest one he’d ever score, considering all the Jets players had essentially stopped skating, and Hellebuyck made no real attempt to stop the shot. They were all expecting a whistle, of course.

Incredibly, a good goal was signaled, the horn went off and the arena went nuts. The Jets protested, but after a brief huddle between the two referees and two linesman, they upheld the original call. That prompted Winnipeg to have to use a coach’s challenge and seek video replay to point out the obvious. The wrong was righted, but it’s silly it even got to that point.

Nobody asked me, but it’s clear the zebras were routinely caught out of position in this one. And out to the lunch for the entire game.

4) One thing Bowness has shown he’s not afraid to do is mix up the lines to get a spark. That was the case Friday, as he kept all four winger pairs intact but had them all playing with different centres than the previous game.

Bowness also shuffled his defence pairs. Morrissey and Neal Pionk were broken up, with the returning Dylan DeMelo — he’d missed the last four games with an upper-body injury — moving into Pionk’s spot. Pionk moved down to play with Brenden Dillon, while Dillon’s previous partner, Nate Schmidt, was shifted to Dylan Samberg.

The veteran coach even pulled out a neat trick late in the second period, putting together a temporary “power line” in the final minute of Scheifele, Dubois and Connor. And, looking for a little more speed in the final frame, he swapped Jonsson-Fjallby with Gagner.

With the Jets missing three top-nine forwards due to injury — Nikolaj Ehlers, Mason Appleton and Morgan Barron — Bowness is wise to keep the blender handy as he tries to find the right mix.

5) Bowness was given a warm “welcome back” by the sold-out crowd at American Airlines Center during a TV timeout, and he seemed genuinely touched and even choked up by the round of applause.

The 67-year-old, who had spent the previous four seasons with the Stars, gave a thumbs up and put his hand to his heart. Bowness missed his club’s first visit here, back on Oct. 17, as he had just tested positive for COVID-19 days earlier.

He insisted prior to puck drop that this was just another game, but his reaction and emotion would suggest otherwise.

UP NEXT: The road trip concludes Sunday night in the Windy City, as the Jets take on Jonathan Toews and his Chicago Blackhawks (6 p.m).

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpgt