Stuart pays painful price for sacrificing his body

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This article was published 23/10/2011 (5091 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE remnants of a shiner still linger under one eye and now Mark Stuart will have a nasty welt on his leg — and who knows where else — after blocking four shots in Saturday’s win over the Carolina Hurricanes.

All in a night’s work for the gritty Winnipeg Jets’ defenceman.

“I took one in the back of the leg,” said Stuart, who leads the Jets with 19 blocks through seven games. “That’s what I have to do for this team. We talked about that before the game — guys playing their role and doing what they do. And that’s what I have to do every night. It hurts, but it’s better than it getting in the net.”

Stuart is one of the Jets’ vets and he spoke after the loss in Ottawa of the mounting frustration after a 1-4-1 start. And now the message is this: the victory over Carolina has to be expected, not celebrated, and there will need to be more of the same Monday against the New York Rangers and the rest of the season.

“You want to win every night. The guys in this room hate to lose,” said Stuart. “We’re tired of scoring one goal and tired of giving up goals on the penalty kill. It’s just a mindset and tonight we showed we can score and come back on teams.

“We’ll let this relief last for a couple of hours. We’ve got to get back to work tomorrow. We’ve got a big game Monday.”

COMEBACK CITY: In their first six games, the Jets raised a lot of question marks.

Coach Claude Noel, though, was sure of one thing.

He said his team was too sensitive, too easily demoralized.

“We don’t have time for being demoralized,” he said Saturday morning.

Certainly the Jets gained confidence with their come-from-behind 5-3 win over the Hurricanes.

“Over-sensitive? You could say that,” said Jets forward Kyle Wellwood. “That comes with being a young team that hasn’t won a lot. You don’t have that natural confidence that when you get down you’re going to win. It’s a tough thing to get a hold of, but that’s what we want to have on our team.”

OUCH UPDATE: Jets fourth-line centre Jim Slater left the game in the third period when he was reaching for a puck and was run over near the boards by a Carolina defenceman.

Slater, who had scored his third goal of the season in the second period, missed the second half of last season because of post-concussion syndrome.

GOOD NUMBERS: The Jets won 61 per cent of Saturday’s faceoffs (38 of 62), by far their best performance of the season in the faceoff circles.

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Bryan Little, 12 for 18, and Ben Maxwell, seven for eight, led the way.

BACK IN ACTION: Maxwell came off the injury list Saturday for his first start of the season.

He played 8:33.

“It was always a fun place to play and I guess it’s a little more loud in here now,” said Maxwell, a former frequent visitor with the AHL’s Hamilton Bulldogs. “I’m excited to get going.”

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca