Schedule throws a haymaker

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This article was published 28/10/2014 (3995 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While they fumbled around for much of their five-game homestand trying to figure out their game, the Winnipeg Jets may not have seen the monster sneaking up on them.

Here comes Sked-zilla.

The 3-5-0 Jets, who occupy the Western Conference’s bottom rung, play tonight in Uniondale, N.Y., against the New York Islanders. It starts a string of nine of their next 11 games away from home.

There’s not another span this daunting the rest of the season.

This week’s four-game excursion features visits to last spring’s Stanley Cup finalists, the New York Rangers (Saturday) and their divisional nemesis, the Chicago Blackhawks (Sunday).

A two-game stop at home next week for visits by Nashville and Pittsburgh then leads to a five-game, nine-day adventure.

In the next three weeks, the Jets will knock out six of their 16 Eastern Conference road games.

“We have a good feeling,” rookie centre Adam Lowry said after Monday’s short practice at the MTS Iceplex. “Last game against Colorado was probably our most complete game from start to finish.

“That’s going to be important. There are going to be tight games on the road and we have to be able to win those one-goal games.”

Their 2-3 homestand was hardly inspiring — especially since the Jets have trouble scoring goals, just nine in seven games after opening night — but it did finish on a good note against the Avs with Sunday afternoon’s 2-1 overtime victory.

Amazingly, it was the team’s first one-goal decision of the season. Winnipeg played 46 of them last season.

Given their scoring challenges these days, it would seem to be the style that fits until such time as the offence awakens.

“We’re going to score more goals,” a confident Blake Wheeler said after beating the Avs. “We’re getting opportunities. It seems like every game, especially with our starts, they’ve been good, we’ve gotten some good scoring chances the last three or four games. We could put teams in two-, three-goal holes and we just haven’t gotten that good feeling with our sticks yet.

“We need to play this way until we get those pucks to go in the net. We need to be comfortable playing these types of games and be patient. Sooner or later we’re going to get this thing to break open a little bit and get guys feeling good about themselves.

“Until then, you’ve just got to bear down.”

It’s quite an ask for an inconsistent team to bear down and bear down well for nine of 11 on the road.

“That’s WAY too far ahead for me,” Jets winger Dustin Byfuglien said Monday. “I take it one game at a time. That’s all we can do, take it one period at a time and just control what we’re doing right now.”

That control was part of their arsenal on Sunday. Now, with a week away from home, it has to be even more refined between coach and players, since the visiting team does not have the last change.

“It’s so early in the year, but on the road you need to have a comfort level with two of your lines to find the other team’s best,” Jets coach Paul Maurice said on Monday. “And you get a little harder matchup with your back-end than you do necessarily at home.

“Some of it is how your team’s going. So you kind of look at your opponent and say, ‘Are we going to try to shut down their strengths or are we going to try to exploit their weaknesses with how we roll our lines off the bench?’

“With that many road games, a lot of times it’s flow, keeping the legs fresh on the ice and not pulling lines off the ice. You end up getting caught running your shut-down lines, and that happens to be (Bryan) Little and (Mark) Scheifele right now. It ends up being too early to try to get the match, and you can run into a little bit of trouble there.”

Maurice said he’s seen enough of this team on the road — including in last season’s second half — to know it’s up to the job.

“I’ve liked our road games going back, obviously not the San Jose game (Oct. 11), but I’ve liked the way we played on the road,” he said. “I think we’re fine with that.”

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca