They’ve come undone

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This article was published 28/04/2024 (525 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

To call it an unravelling might be too polite.

To say the Winnipeg Jets have come unglued and undisciplined in this opening round playoff series with the Colorado Avalanche is a massive understatement.

That the Jets had a parade to the penalty box in the second period on Sunday afternoon is a big part of the reason they’ve been pushed to the brink of elimination after a 5-1 loss to the Avalanche before a raucous crowd at Ball Arena.

Game 5 is set for Canada Life Centre on Tuesday, with a puck drop of around 8:50 p.m.

“Obviously, that power play is going to make you pay when you do that,” Jets centre Mark Scheifele told reporters in Denver. “They’re a fast team. They keep you on your toes and clearly they’ve made those adjustments from the regular season, and we just let that get away from us, and lost our composure a little bit in that second period, and it cost us.”

With the contest tied 1-1, the Jets took four minors in the second period and the Avalanche scored on two of them — adding an unassisted end-to-end marker from Cale Makar to put an exclamation point on what has turned into a mostly one-sided affair against a Central Division rival.

The Jets’ penalty kill has been a problem for much of the season, residing in the bottom third of the NHL for the majority of it.

That hasn’t improved during the Stanley Cup playoffs, where the Jets have now allowed the Avalanche to score six times in four games — and another just after a penalty to Neal Pionk expired in Game 3.

Another issue for the Jets is that several of these minor penalties are of the undisciplined and avoidable variety.

“That’s what I mean, self-inflicted,” said Jets head coach Rick Bowness. “Listen, (the Avalanche) are playing great, coming at us with a ton of speed, no question. But we seem to be able to handle it fine in the second half of the first period. We play like that, that’s the way we want to play. Penalties took us out of the game.”

Sunday’s list of minors included an interference call on Jets defenceman Logan Stanley for knocking down Valeri Nichushkin when he didn’t have the puck and a roughing minor to Stanley for getting tangled up with Brandon Duhaime behind the net in the defensive zone.

A holding call on Vladislav Namestnikov just past the midway point of the second period and a roughing call against Nino Niederreiter for putting a headlock on Avalanche defenceman Sean Walker in the offensive zone with just over a minute to go in the middle frame led to power play markers for Nichushkin, who is up to six goals in the series after notching his first playoff hat trick.

“It’s tough to say. You want to go in for a hit and obviously the elbow was a little too high and they made the call,” said Niederreiter. “I mean, it sucks that they scored but we’ve got to look forward to the next game and that’s what we’ve got to change.”

The Avalanche are going to create enough opportunities for penalties to be taken with their speed, so giving them additional chances with the man-advantage isn’t a recipe for success.

One of the reasons that Stanley was brought back into the lineup after the hand injury to Brenden Dillon was to assist on the penalty kill, but that’s difficult to do when you’re in the box serving a pair of minors.

Prior to the game, Bowness said that part of the reason he brought Axel Jonsson-Fjallby into the lineup up front for David Gustafsson was to assist with the penalty kill because of his speed, but he didn’t see any time with that unit.

Bowness said after the game that had more to do with the Avalanche scoring on their final two opportunities and liking the way the Jets’ handled the first two situations.

One of the ways to compensate for a leaky penalty kill is to even things out on the power play, but that hasn’t transpired to this point.

Special teams are always important in a series and right now, the Jets are losing that battle by a significant margin (7-2), though the lone shorthanded marker was scored with the net empty in Game 3 when the Jets were on the power play and enjoying a 6-on-4 advantage late in the game.

The Jets scored once on the power play (1-for-2) in Game 1, then once in Game 3 but they were zero-for-four on Sunday afternoon and they didn’t generate a whole lot of quality looks when they were trying to get back into the contest until their final man-advantage.

Through four games, the Jets are now 2-for-11 (18.2%) with the power play and operating at 57.1% efficiency while shorthanded.

Coaches are generally looking for the total of the power play and penalty killing efficiency to eclipse 100 and right now, the Jets are stuck at 75.3.

So while there are a number of areas the Jets will need to be better in if they hope to force another trip back to Denver, being more disciplined and doing a better job with both the man-advantage and while shorthanded would go a long way toward accomplishing that.

ken.wiebe@freepress.mb.ca

X: @WiebesWorld