Jets look for 2 wins in Florida

by **jedi17** Wed 04 Jan 2017, 8:34 pm

jedi17

jedi17: Moderator; Posts : 10738
Join date : 2013-02-20

Post n°1

Jets look for 2 wins in Florida

by jedi17 Wed 04 Jan 2017, 8:34 pm

Jets look for 2 wins in Florida

January 4, 2017, 4:11 PM ET [3 Comments]

Peter Tessier
Jets look for 2 wins in Florida Win

Winnipeg Jets Blogger • Winnipeg Jets Writer • RSS • Archive • CONTACT

Jets look for 2 wins in Florida

The visiting team did not put up much of a masterpiece against the Tampa Bay Lightning yesterday as they played the first of two games in the Sunshine state. While leading after the first period 1-0 it was anything but a good ‘road period’ as the Jets were outshot 17-6.

That’s just shots on net.

Shot attempts were 27-13 in favour of the Bolts. It took until nearly five minutes into the third period before the Jets had clawed back to even in terms of attempts with the home team. They were more adept at putting the puck in the net though. That happened with an outburst of three goals in the third period while the home team only had one.

Those goals were due to some brilliant work from Wheeler and Perreault for Trouba’s blast but don’t forget about Nik Ehlers who had two on the night.

The first from Ehlers was a sweet little move that had him showing deke to get Vasilevsky down before shooting up high.
But that was the second period and Tampa came back and made in interesting at 4-2 before Ehlers did this:

“Broken ankles” as my son would likely say.

The game was sealed on a Laine empty net goal for his second point of the night but the Jets allowed it to get interesting by letting Tampa make it to 5-4 before that.

Tonight marks round two in Florida as the Jets take on the Panthers.

The Jets have to take up a better opening frame tonight and more importantly pull that effort through to 60 minutes. Yes it’s a cliche but it’s also correct as for the first time in a long while the Jets actually outplayed the opposition in the second period. Keep that up and it might be possible to turn this listing ship around…might.

There was no-pregame skate today as head coach Paul Maurice has stated that will not happen on games where the team plays back-to-back. Lines are expected to be the same and I believe that Hutchinson will start.

Play 60, stay out of penalty trouble and start making more offence. There’s your very secret keys to a win for Winnipeg.

A few things have started emerging as topics within the Jets fan domain has been the play of Ehlers and that of low-event hockey. First Ehlers.

I’ve said it, as have many others, but Laine is the bright shiny new two and Ehlers is the old faithful, even though he’s sophomore. Think Buzz Lightyear and Woody from Toy Story. That being said, how Ehlers is seeing the game right now is incredible. While his scoring run has been recent, he’s been doing a lot of hard work to get those chances and it’s not going unnoticed beyond Winnipeg fans. So often, especially last night, my Twitter feed fills with praise from what people are seeing from Ehlers as it’s become noticeable now because it’s happening with frequency.

Ehlers is good. In fact he’s starting to look very good with 34 points in 40 games now tying Patrik Laine for second on the team. That’s a point pace .85/game and on pace for almost 70 points this season. That would eclipse Mark Scheifele’s 61 of last season and put him tied with Taveres last season and ahead of such players like Bergeron, Giroux, Kucherov and Hall. In fact he’s ahead of all of those players right now.

The Jets have been a low-event hockey this season with regards to offence and defence. That’s good for the latter part but not so good for the former and that is the area this team, aside from special teams and consistent goaltending has struggled. By ‘low-event’ people are referring to the amount of shots and scoring chances being directed at the opposition while at even strength.

Is this a systems thing, a personnel thing or something else? That’s the debate point for later but what if we saw a glimpse of the microcosm of this problem last night? The Jets finally opened up the offence but it took them until later in the first period to get moving. As the game went on they took over and starting firing the puck more and scoring but it was unsustainable from a defensive point of view. RIght?

That’s probably something that’s worth looking at in a bigger sense than one game but to the observer that game had a bit of everything of Jets problems.

Start slow it takes too long to get offence going.
Offence gets moving and they score.
Can’t hold lead for very long
Keep lead
Get into penalty trouble
Special teams let’s opposition back in the game
Goaltending was not average quality

The biggest difference was that the Jets scored first and finally scored some goal in the second period. If that had not happened there might not have been a win. The bigger point here is if the Jets open up the offence are they able to keep the defensive side sound? If not are they playing defensive hockey to support two ‘rookie-ish’ goalies and sacrificing offence to win tight games? We don’t even need to discuss special teams.

I think it’s worth watching this a bit more closely to see if by increasing the offensive events the team sacrifices on defence and if that’s something they can tolerate and perhaps survive. Tonight’s game would be a good place to start.