A few bright spots amid the Jets’ opening-night stumbles on Broadway

Opinion

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This article was published 04/10/2019 (2168 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Starting the season with a loss is never a positive, but in the Jets’ 6-4 loss to the New York Rangers on Thursday night there were some positive signs to cling on to.

The Rangers are a team that has struggled to control the flow of play the last couple seasons. Theoretically, they should be better in that area due to the Artemi Panarin and Jacob Trouba additions alone. We’ll have to wait and see how much better the Rangers are, but for the Jets’ part, they controlled 59 per cent of the shot attempts in the game. One game’s worth of controlling the flow of play isn’t a lot to go on, but as disappointing as the result may be, the bigger sample sizes are more indicative of overall performance than the score in a single game.

So did the Jets’ control of shot attempts translate to other areas?

As is usually the case when you bring more data to the table, the answer is a bit more complicated than a simple yes or no. The Jets did carry over their control of shot attempts into shots from the inner slot, the most dangerous area of the ice, but they were pretty much even in shots from the high slot and overall scoring chances, and the Rangers had superior control of passes to the slot.

That’s a bit of an outlier for the Jets, as they’ve been one of the best teams in the league at controlling passes to the slot over the last several seasons, but in one game anything can happen, and the Rangers were able to use their superior control of puck movement to convert on more of their shots.

The Rangers also won more loose pucks than the Jets did in the game, both of the contested variety in puck battles, and the free ones all around the ice, which gave them more opportunities to attack with the Jets outside of their optimal defensive posture.

Going beyond the data and looking at every scoring chance the Rangers produced, there weren’t many that were directly the cause of a mistake by the Jets in handling the puck, save for Dmitry Kulikov’s turnover in the slot to Mike Zibanejad in the third period.

What gave the Jets fits was the speed the Rangers were able to generate through the neutral zone, which caught them flat-footed and found easy attacking lanes too often. The Jets didn’t give the Rangers a lot of opportunity to get those entries, but when New York did break through they were dangerous.

Not to short-change the Jets, they actually had the advantage in rush chances in the game, but on the defensive side it was clear that speed was a bit of an issue.

Overall, despite struggling with the speed of the Rangers and not controlling the passing game the way they usually do, it would be entirely reasonable to expect the Jets to come out of the 5-vs.-5 portion of this game tied most of time if it were replayed several times, but special teams is another story.

Thanks to outdrawing the Rangers in penalties, the Jets outchanced the Rangers with the man-advantage 8-3, 6-2 in chances on net, and 3-0 in chances from the inner slot or high-danger area.

Their reward for that in this one was to just break even, with the Rangers scoring on a rebound off an initial shot that handcuffed Connor Hellebuyck and bounced through a couple Jets right to the stick of Panarin.

At the other side of the ice, Henrik Lundqvist was brilliant despite strong pressure by the Jets, with his biggest stop coming on a low-to-high one-timer from the inner slot by Jack Roslovic, one of the best chances by either team all game long.

In all situations the Jets substantially outchanced the Rangers from the inner slot, with 12 high-danger chances to New York’s seven, so you have to hand it to Lundqvist for keeping the game within reach long enough for the Rangers to pounce.

There are things for Winnipeg to work on, and perhaps a weakness to handling speed through the neutral zone was exposed, but nothing from the first game of the season is too worrying despite the thin group on defence the Jets have been forced into icing.