Jets finish road swing in battle mode

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This article was published 17/11/2014 (4069 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — For a team that has too long settled for consolation prizes, Sunday’s overtime point from a 4-3 loss to the Minnesota Wild may amount to something more than that for the Winnipeg Jets.

Rallying out of a 3-0 hole in the most unlikely of spots, in the third period at the end of a five-game road trip where the final game was an afternoon affair that followed a night game 1,120 kilometres away, it’s not hard to see why there were no downcast voices in the Jets locker-room even after Marco Scandella’s overtime shot decided it for Minnesota.

Jets coach Paul Maurice was positively raving about his team.

“It was a fantastic game for us,” he said. “Just a great battle back in a game that sets up for everything to go wrong for you. Two horrible bounces off of legs to put you down 3-0 in a game.

“I’m just really proud of our team. Hey, five games on the road for us, back-to-back in that situation and that was fantastic. I’m really, really proud of the way they handled a couple of real bad breaks there in the first period that would have shattered most teams. But we got a little snarl on and fought our way back into that game.”

Winnipeg’s five-game trip ended at 2-2-1 but the coach was offering high marks for style.

“Last night’s game (in Nashville, a 2-1 loss) was a real grind,” he said. “That was a hard-fought game that you don’t recover from in under a day.

“I’m happy with this game more than any other. I really am. The win in Carolina and the win in Ottawa were good games. We played hard. I thought we played really well in Montreal and really well last night, not in terms of perfect execution, but how hard they competed, but this was my favourite game by far.”

Jets captain Andrew Ladd, who tied the game at 10:47 of the third period with a deflection, was loving his team’s attitude on Sunday.

“I thought we earned that point,” Ladd said. “We did a good job of getting ourselves back in it and we stuck together as a group and battled hard.

“We were awful close, a post away, from winning in regulation. We wanted to finish this road trip off. We thought we’d been playing pretty consistently lately. We had a tough one against Nashville.

‘I’m just really proud of our team. Hey, five games on the road for us, back-to-back in that situation and that was fantastic’

— Jets head coach Paul Maurice

“Sometimes those are tough games to get back on. We knew we had to rally against another divisional opponent. I thought we did a good job of sticking with it.”

Ladd said the intense divisional game was “fun,” which suggests the next two between these teams, Dec. 27 in St. Paul and Dec. 29 in Winnipeg, should be as much fun.

“It was intense,” Ladd said. “I think it was a fun game to play in. As a player, you love playing in those types of games. We found a way to get ourselves back in it and get some energy there in the third.”

Jets winger Michael Frolik, who got his team rolling with the first goal at 5:55 of the third, said the overtime point will be valuable.

“Definitely it will,” Frolik said. “We said after the game, ‘Don’t be disappointed, we had a great comeback.’ We had a great road trip and we’re just looking to build. We scored three goals when we’ve had trouble scoring. Hopefully that’s going to help our confidence, that and a huge comeback.”

Jets goalie Michael Hutchinson, who took over from Ondrej Pavelec to start the second period and took the overtime loss, said he had a good feeling about what was happening when Frolik scored.

“Usually you don’t notice too much on the road, but the fans, a bunch of them made the trip down, and were really loud,” he said. “It was hard not to notice them tonight.”

The stand-back, big-picture thoughts came from Jets defenceman Zach Bogosian after Sunday’s game.

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“It was a bit of an interesting game to be part of,” Bogosian said. “Hopefully down the stretch that’s a big point for us.”

What was his view of the Jets’ flat start?

“Don’t play like sh– the first two periods,” he said. “That’s about it.

“The first 10 minutes we were just flat, they had a couple of lucky bounces. Other than that, I thought we battled hard and battled for each other.”

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca