Jets’ penalty kill steps up

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This article was published 10/12/2021 (1455 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VANCOUVER — Nobody is throwing a parade, nor are any bold declarations or sweeping statements being made. But for a Winnipeg Jets penalty killing unit in desperate need of something — ANYTHING — to go right, a perfect five-for-five performance in Seattle Thursday night was just what the doctor ordered.

Turns out a heart-to-heart discussion about everything that was going wrong may have sparked some changes.

“We had a pretty honest meeting (Thursday) morning about where we’re at,” said Jets defenceman Brenden Dillon. “We feel like we’ve got the personnel to be a lot better on that and take pride. I think we’ve got 60-plus games (56) to get this thing going in the right direction before playoff-time. (Thursday night) was a great stepping stone for us.”

Baby steps indeed, as the Jets entered play Friday night at Rogers Arena with just a 68.4 per cent success rate on the year, which is second-worst in the NHL. They didn’t have to look far to see the only group struggling more than them — the Canucks are dead-last at 65.9 per cent.

“We were moving our feet. We’ve got mobile guys that kill (penalties) and if you ask any power play or offensively gifted player, you’ve got to try and take their time and space away. For these (Seattle) guys, they’ve got some skilled guys, guys who can make plays and when we pressure like that — I think we had a 2-on-1 and a breakaway — it was fun and it gives our team a little bit of life too. We’re not just sitting back and feeling like we’re taken in a little bit, we get some momentum from it. So, it was great,” said Dillon.

It might not be a coincidence that in Winnipeg’s 4-2 loss on Tuesday night at Canada Life Centre, they watched one of the league’s best give them fits. Carolina uses an aggressive system on the PK, and that was evident in the third-period when they killed off an Ian Cole kneeing major with ease and thwarted any chance of a Jets comeback.

Sure enough, Paul Maurice’s crew had a noticeable increase in their urgency and foot speed, along with better positioning against the Kraken.

“We kind of made some adjustments, wanted to be more aggressive,” admitted forward Kyle Connor, who is now being used on the PK and certainly brings a speed and skill element that was sorely missing. “You could see that, trying to get top-down, pressure all over the ice and not getting to the case where you’re pushing them down and then back off, giving them time and space. As a power play, we know how tough that is. Carolina did that so well against us the other night.”

Of course, it helps when your goaltender is on his game — the old saying is that the masked man is usually your best penalty killer — and Connor Hellebuyck stood tall when he was tested. But he certainly liked what he saw in front of him.

“We were aggressive. We were all over them. We didn’t let them set up. We didn’t let them have plays. We made them earn it. We worked hard and it showed,” said Hellebuyck.

Now the trick is to bottle that up and carry it forward, not just for a period or a game, but for a prolonged stretch of play.

“We’ve got to take some pride in that. In our room, we’re prideful guys and we know expect a lot better of ourselves,” said Dillon. “We know we’ve got better. We just made a couple of tweaks. We moved our legs, we had great sticks, we had guys blocking and obviously we’ve got the best goalie in the league that can stop (pucks). They’ve got an extra guy out there, they’re going to get some opportunities, but (Thursday) we were awesome and hopefully we can build off that.”

TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE: Dillon is no stranger to hockey in Seattle, having spent four seasons playing for the Western Hockey League’s Thunderbirds (2007-2011). But he admits it was a surreal feeling this week to step inside Climate Pledge Arena, the beautifully-refurbished home of the expansion Kraken.

Dillon played in the last game at the rink in its previous incarnation as Key Arena, way back in 2008.

“An unbelievable experience being here for that. Didn’t recognize it too much. Our home dressing room was a little different,” he said. “To come in here and play the first one, it was cool to walk around downtown Seattle (Wednesday night and just kind of relive some of the great, awesome memories I had from a 16- to 20-year-old kid coming down to play some junior hockey. Here we are 10 years later. It’s pretty special.”

MAURICE’S MENTOR: A quick stop in Vancouver on Friday night gave Maurice an unexpected chance to catch up with an old friend. Jim Rutherford — who has a long history with Maurice including drafting him into the Ontario Hockey League with the Windsor Spitfires as a 17-year-old, then later recruited him into coaching and eventually hired him in Hartford — was named the Canucks president of hockey operations following an organizational housecleaning earlier this week.

“I’m really happy for him. He’s just a fantastic guy to work for and another guy that understands the game at a very high level. What he’s really good with is — I don’t know exactly how to explain it — he’s exceptionally patient and at the same time he’s very aggressive. He can look at something and say we should be patient with these five or six pieces and we’re going to play them, give them time, and build around them,” said Maurice.

“Then he’ll go out and get what he needs. The one thing, when you look at the Stanley Cups he’s won, he made very important decisions and moves in those years to put their team over the top. I think it’s the way he relates to people. He’ll be in the room a bit, he’ll get to know everybody. He always knows what your team needs. I felt, the greatest part of our relationship is he’d know when he needed to take me out for coffee, tell a few jokes, and relax. I had a tendency to get wound up and snarly back then, it’s a different time now. He’d always pick the right time to come in and relieve the pressure a little bit.”

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg