Simple miscues cost Jets victory

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/11/2014 (3976 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In retrospect, maybe the reason Winnipeg Jets defenceman Zach Bogosian was smiling Thursday morning when he said his team planned to take no penalties Thursday night against the Pittsburgh Penguins was because Bogosian knew that something resembling the exact opposite was in the works.

While the Jets claimed they had nothing but profound respect for the red-hot Penguins power play, it didn’t stop them from taking three fighting majors, a 10-minute misconduct and too many roughing, slashing and unsportsmanlike penalties to count in what was a wild 4-3 shootout loss to the Penguins at the MTS Centre.

The weird part, however, was that it wasn’t all the penalties and ensuing five Pittsburgh power plays that did the Jets in on a night their penalty-killing unit was flawless against a Penguins team that had scored on 41 per cent of their power plays coming into the game.

Instead, it was just a series of simple Jets miscues — a centre-ice giveaway, a misplayed dump-in — that ultimately cost Winnipeg a second point on this night.

“Their goals were just simple breakdowns,” said Jets forward Blake Wheeler. “They got some chances and they buried them. That was really it. They weren’t controlling the game when they scored those goals.”

But while Winnipeg might have lost the battle to Pittsburgh, the message out of the Jets dressing room last night was that they felt they had won the war.

“That game had it’s own unique personality — it was meaner than some of the other ones,” said Jets head coach Paul Maurice. “There were some heavy hits, later hits, lots of chirping on the benches. So it was good to be a part of it that you handled it the right way…

“I just liked that game.”

So did Wheeler, who was one of the Jets players who dropped the gloves last night. “That’s a good sign. You’ve got a group of guys in here that as hard as we’ve battled the last few weeks, I think you can kind of see us starting to really bond together out there.

“When one guy goes down, you’ve got another sticking up for him. And that’s how you win games in this league. That creates something special in the room that doesn’t show up outside of it. That just creates a lot of good things.”

Sidney Crosby saw it the same way over in the Pittsburgh dressing room. “I think both teams stuck up for each other and made sure they were there for their teammates,” said the Pens captain. “For the most part, I thought we just stayed with it and just kept playing.”

With the shootout loss, the Jets are now 5-0-2 in their last seven games and 7-5-2 overall.

“We’re playing pretty close to the game we want to play,” said Maurice. “I think this is a positive game for us. I don’t know if it’s a step forward or not. But it was another one we were ready to play from the start, played hard, made some mistakes, forced some mistakes and it was just a good game.

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“It was one of those games where there were a lot of things flying out there. It was a good battle. It was fun to be a part of… Everyone in there is tired and they should be.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek