Jets absolutely dominate Predators

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This article was published 08/04/2023 (908 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Jets played like their season was on the line Saturday night, kicking their game into another gear and pulling away with a pivotal 2-0 victory over the Nashville Predators in downtown Winnipeg.

This one wasn’t nearly as close as the final score would indicate, as desperation from the home team led to large stretches of dominance.

“It was a big win for this team,” said Mark Scheifele, whose career-high 40th goal of the year stood as the winner. “We needed that win for sure.”

Indeed they did, especially after a disappointing 3-1 loss to the Calgary Flames on Wednesday night which made the Western Conference playoff race even tighter than it already was.

Now, at least a tiny bit of breathing room.

The day began with the Jets and Flames tied for the final wild-card spot, and the Predators just one point behind. Winnipeg and Nashville had four games remaining, while Calgary had three.

Winnipeg improves to 44-32-3, while Nashville falls to 40-31-8. Calgary was playing in Vancouver at press time.

Connor Hellebuyck stopped all 28 shots he faced for his fourth shutout of the season. Juuse Saros stopped 36 of 38 shots he faced, while also getting help from a trio of goal posts on the night.

Here’s how this one went down:

1) It was a fairly tepid start, with both teams playing rather low-event hockey in a cautious opening period. Shots were 8-7 for Nashville, but neither Hellebuyck or Saros had to do anything overly heroic.

The Jets were starting to seize control of the play in the latter stages, and they carried that over to what was arguably their best 20 minutes of the year.

They outshot Nashville 20-5 in the middle frame, and finally got rewarded when Mark Scheifele’s shot hit Saros’ glove, hit the post, and then trickled across the line after hitting the goaltender’s skate.

“Obviously a big game and a big time in the game, so obviously that made it feel even better,” Scheifele said of the tally at 15:06 that had the crowd of 14,075 erupting.

“It was obviously a very, very good feeling and I’m lucky I play with some really good players.”

Through two periods, shot attempts were an absurd 62-22 for Winnipeg.

“Clearly that game could have been 4-0 or 5-0 after two periods,” said Jets coach Rick Bowness. “The goal posts, we missed empty nets. But that was a dominant, dominant second period.”

2) You wondered if the Jets might start cheating for offence in the third period as frustration at not being able to pull away set in.

“It’s only a one goal lead. You’ve got to keep pushing, you’ve got to stay on them and make it really hard,” Scheifele said of the mindset. “When you’re playing in the O-zone it makes it pretty hard for them to score a goal. Sometimes good offence is the best defence.”

To their credit, the Jets picked up where they left off, with Neal Pionk scoring his career-best 10th of the year just 96 seconds in to make it 2-0.

“When you’re dominating the game like that you’ve just got to stick with it,” Scheifele said.

“You know, you start to worry when you’re not getting the chances and we had plenty of them tonight. Saros played amazing. He’s one of the best goalies in the world for a reason and he kept them in it. It was obviously good to get those two and it would’ve been nice to make it a little less close, but when you play against a good goalie it makes it tough.”

3) Pionk’s goal was set up by Nikolaj Ehlers, who was flying all night long. He was Winnipeg’s best skater, without question.

“We were using our speed, getting pucks deep and working their D. It’s pretty cliche but it works,” Ehlers said.

“We had some very good o-zone chances in the second period there that got us going in their zone for a couple of minutes. We’re happy with the way that we played tonight. Obviously, there’s things we can still clean up. But overall, we played a team game.”

Ehlers said getting that second goal was huge.

“We were hungry tonight and that break from the second to the third didn’t stop us,” he said. “We knew what we had to do to finish off this game and we were able to do that.”

Bowness said that might have been the best game of the year for Ehlers.

“He was skating great and against a team like that that plays 1-1-3 in the neutral zone and they’re standing there, you’ve got to get the D turning and you’ve got to get them into foot races,” said Bowness.

“So, when you get them into foot races, you want to make sure you have the speed to get there and Nik gives us that speed. So that was one of his better games, for sure.”

4) You look at Nashville’s roster and how they’ve done it, especially considering they sold off several pieces at the trade deadline (Nino Niederreiter, Mattias Ekholm, Tanner Jeannot) and have been decimated by injuries to stars such as Roman Josi, Matt Duchene, Filip Forsberg and Ryan Johansen.

Yet they came to town full of confidence, having just beaten the Vegas Golden Knights and Carolina Hurricanes earlier this week to stay alive.

“Obviously, they have a lot of new guys, young guys, but they have some grit. They have the skill. They have the speed. They’re a very, very good team,” said Ehlers.

They also have Saros, of course.

“We knew they’d come out pretty good because they were feeling good about themselves,” said Bowness. “Once we started putting pressure on from the end of that first period, then we just kept with it for the remainder of the game.”

5) Speaking of feeling good, the Jets got a boost at the morning skate when forward Cole Perfetti hit the ice for the first time since suffering an upper-body injury on Feb. 19 in New Jersey.

“We’ll give him a couple weeks. He’s going to need that,” said Bowness. “(Saturday) was a light day for him. As we go along, we’ll increase the workload. Listen, make sure we’re still playing in two weeks so we can use him.”

Perfetti could be an option towards the end of a first-round playoff series, provided the Jets are actually in one.

“It’s awesome just having him in the room. He’s one of my best friends on the team. I definitely missed him while he was away, and we missed him on the ice,” said Scheifele.

“It’s just awesome to have him around the room and know that he’s healthy, that he’s getting on the ice. It’s just awesome to have his little baby face back in the room.”

Up next: The Jets play their final regular-season home game on Monday against the San Jose Sharks, who have already beaten them twice this year. Then it’s off to Minnesota and Colorado for the final two contests.

“We know what we need to do here the last three games. We will be ready for those,” said Ehlers.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg