Jets miss major opportunity

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/02/2023 (932 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

COLUMBUS — This was supposed to be the easy one of what is shaping up to be a tough four-game road trip. The free space on the NHL’s proverbial bingo card, if you will. A gimme. A layup.

Apparently nobody told the Columbus Blue Jackets that. Because the league’s worst team completed a stunning season sweep of the Winnipeg Jets, pulling off a 3-1 upset victory at Nationwide Arena on Thursday night.

You can mark this down as a major opportunity missed, in more ways than one.

“It doesn’t matter who you’re playing against. It’s definitely one we should’ve won,” said a frustrated Kyle Connor, who was the only Winnipeg player to beat Columbus goaltender Joonas Korpisalo despite 38 shots and 39 additional shot attempts that were either blocked or went wide.

The Jets had a chance to grab a share of first place in both the Central Division and Western Conference with a victory, playing their game in hand on the front-running Dallas Stars.

And then they were given a whopping seven power plays on the night, including an incredible three five-on-three man advantages in which they, quite remarkably, went 0-for-3. (And 1-for-7 overall).

“It’s an opportunity lost regardless of the opponent. (It’s about) how we played,” said Jets coach Rick Bowness.

“The power play’s gotta come through there. The five-on-threes, that’s the difference in the game. You don’t get five-on-threes very often. When you get them like that, you’ve got to take advantage of them and score a couple goals. And we didn’t. Simple as that,” said Bowness.

Winnipeg falls to 34-20-1. Columbus improves to 17-34-4, including a perfect 2-0-0 against the Jets following a 4-1 triumph back in December at Canada Life Centre.

Here’s our detailed breakdown from the press box perch and inside a rather subdued post-game locker room:

1 Something’s gotta give on a power play that has gone ice cold in recent games. If Winnipeg isn’t overpassing the puck, they’re firing it high and wide.

Sure, Korpisalo was rock-solid, too. But the Jets didn’t make life difficult enough for him.

Connor got Winnipeg’s only goal of the game, with two seconds left in a first period that Winnipeg dominated. It came shortly after the first five-on-three of the night had expired.

That was all they could muster despite ample time to do more damage.

“I thought we had some looks, change it up, try to draw them high. A couple of down low plays, a couple of one-timers on top. We just got to bear down,” Connor said

Nikolaj Ehlers, who is arguably the most dynamic forward on the team, is currently relegated to the second unit, which barely sees the ice. Blake Wheeler recently took his spot on PP1 along with Connor, Mark Scheifele, Pierre-Luc Dubois and Josh Morrissey.

“On the power play you always want to score or at least create momentum. We got one goal and it wasn’t enough,” said Ehlers, who missed 36 games with a sports hernia earlier this year but declared himself at “100 per cent.”

That means that on a night when the top guys all got upwards of seven minutes with the man advantage — including all 2:05 of five-on-three time — Ehlers was on for just 2:11.

“We’ve got to change some personnel up,” Bowness said, without offering any additional details.

2 Winnipeg then got into penalty trouble of its own, especially in an ugly second period in which they undid any and all momentum they’d built off the Connor goal.

Dubois took back-to-back minors, for hooking and holding, that had his coach fuming.

“Moving the feet, keeping the stick on the ice… A couple holding penalties. I hate those,” said Bowness.

Patrik Laine, who along with Jack Roslovic came over in the swap for Dubois, tied the game at the 10 minute mark of the middle frame with Dubois in the sin bin.

Overall, Columbus went 1-for-6. With 13 combined power plays, five-on-five play was at a premium.

“It affects everyone’s ice time. Some guys are getting too much, and other guys aren’t getting enough,” said Bowness.

“It’s unnecessary penalties at the wrong time that really hurt us. So when you get some things going and you’re playing really well, the last thing you want to do is take back-to-back penalties and get their (top) guys out there. We’ll address that.”

3 With the game deadlocked heading into the third, the chance was there for Winnipeg to come out firing. Instead, it was more of the same.

The dagger came at 9:40, when Kent Johnson snuck a shot from a bad angle through the pads of goaltender David Rittich. Roslovic drew the primary assist. It came 10 seconds after Neal Pionk’s tripping penalty had expired.

“It just squeezed through,” Bowness said of the game-winner. “Again, when you throw the puck at the net, you never know. We had a lot of shot attempts that missed the net. We had a lot of shot attempts that were blocked and it shows you that when you throw it from anywhere at the net and you see what happens.”

Winnipeg pressed for the equalizer, but couldn’t convert. Boone Jenner sealed it with an empty-netter in the final seconds.

“We didn’t hit the net enough. We didn’t make it hard on their goalie,” said Ehlers.

Rittich, making a second consecutive start in place of an under-the-weather Connor Hellebuyck, stopped 22 of 24 shots he faced.

4 The Manitoba Moose coaching staff between 2017-2021 was all over this one.

Former head coach Pascal Vincent was behind the Columbus bench, where he is in his second year as an assistant. Former Moose assistant Marty Johnston is in his first year working with the Jets. And current Moose assistant Eric Dubois, father of Pierre-Luc, is on a call-up while Jets assistant Brad Lauer is dealing with a herniated disc.

5 Winnipeg is now just 10-12-0 against Eastern Conference opponents this year, with 10 head-to-head games remaining. They are a stellar 24-8-1 against Western Conference opponents, with 17 head-to-head games remaining.

6 The road trip now shifts to the New York area, where the Jets will play three games in four days starting Sunday. First up are the New Jersey Devils, then the New York Rangers on a back-to-back Monday. It wraps up on Wednesday against the New York Islanders.

“We’ve got to take what we can from this game and after that, leave it behind us, focus on the present, what we can control here,” said Connor.

“Every point coming from here on out is going to be crucial, whether we’re playing Columbus or we’ve got three good teams coming up as well. We’re going to come at it with the mentality that, ‘Oh, hey. This is going to be playoff hockey coming down.’”

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg