Jets set to play a team fighting for playoff life

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This article was published 17/04/2018 (2200 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

They’ve taken some impressive early strides, but the hardest work is still ahead for the Winnipeg Jets as they look to finish off a division rival.

After winning three of the first four games against the Minnesota Wild, the Jets are in prime position for the first playoff series victory in franchise history and the first this city will have seen from an NHL squad in 31 years.

And yes, the odds greatly favour teams that take a 3-1 lead in best-of-sevens, with 90 per cent of squads that get in that position finishing the job.

But this is still a young and inexperienced roster when it comes to post-season success, one that is still very much finding its way with every game. The Jets have managed to weather the storm with injuries and any bumps in the road, such as the 6-2 thrashing they received in Game 3, were quickly put out of sight, out of mind as they followed that up with a neat and tidy 2-0 victory in Game 4.

Now the scene shifts back to Winnipeg, where the Jets will have a shot to close it out before another “whiteout” on Friday night.

Winnipeg won the first two games on home ice by scores of 3-2 and 4-1, but it wasn’t facing a Wild team that was down to its last lifeline, as it now will be.

Jets head coach Paul Maurice offered up some insights Wednesday as to what he will be telling his troops when they return to practice today.

“That in most games, fellas, there’s not anything more. Certainly each game has its own feeling, by the number, whether it’s one through seven, but the ability to not change your game, not feel like you have to do something different because there’s more impact on the game,” Maurice said.

“We can anticipate a certain style by opponents, teams that are potentially in their last game, so you know that certainly they’ll come with all of their speed as well as they can, and we’re going to have to be right and ready. I find with teams facing elimination that there’s a freedom in their game that maybe is not there; they’ll push earlier in a game if they get down.”

Winnipeg certainly limited Minnesota’s offensive chances on Tuesday night in St. Paul, helped by the fact the Wild learned before the game that top playoff scorer Zach Parise would be lost for the duration of the series with a broken sternum. Parise had scored in each of the first three games.

“It changes the structure of their lines, so they made adjustments to their lines. But I think you see as the series goes, you see more and more movement around the two centremen, around (Eric) Staal and around (Mikko) Koivu, so with those two drivers in the middle of the ice,” Maurice said.

That the Jets were so stingy despite missing regular blue-liners Tyler Myers, Toby Enstrom and Dmitry Kulikov was even more impressive. Depth defencemen Ben Chiarot, Joe Morrow and rookie Tucker Poolman all played important roles.

“They’ve kind of moved out of being depth defencemen into being key pieces,” Maurice said.

“We got right back to fast and it was on both sides of the puck. And I thought we actually got better as the game went on. Certainly defensively in the third, there was not a lot of easy ice to play on. I don’t think that we moved the puck as well as we did in Games 1 and 2 and maybe true for both teams, but we looked like we hadn’t been on a plane in the morning. We looked like our pace and our speed was really strong,” he said.

It also helps having your goalie making all the big saves, as Connor Hellebuyck did Tuesday night, and when you open the scoring, as Winnipeg has done in all four games.

“Other than Game 3, it’s almost been a one-off. We’re at 1-0 through a big chunk of two periods in all of those games. It was critically important for the final score. It mattered in each one of the games but I didn’t think that the games necessarily changed that much right after we (scored). In Games 1 and 2, we got better after the first, much stronger in Game 2, through our second period,” Maurice said.

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“But there wasn’t a big switch where you scored the first goal and you got all the momentum and ran the game. The game kind of stayed pretty darn tight-checking. It’s not from a lack of offence or a lack of creativity. Both teams do a really good job of making it hard for you to get a puck to the net. It’s important when you’re going into the third period and you have the lead that you have the template of how you want to approach it.

“We’ve never talked about changing things or playing a simpler game all the way through, that’s the game that we’re playing. But we do talk about trying to score the next goal.”

Winnipeg and Minnesota played every other day during the first four games of the series, with a two-day break before Game 5. That will likely change how Friday’s game looks, Maurice predicted.

“Rest is good. We’ll see a really fast game (Friday). It’s been a pretty physical series. It’s certainly been a fast series, so it’ll make for a better hockey game. Throw a two-day block into any playoff series, I think the next game out is gonna be really high-energy,” he said.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @mikemcintyrewpg

Mike McIntyre
Sports reporter

Mike McIntyre grew up wanting to be a professional wrestler. But when that dream fizzled, he put all his brawn into becoming a professional writer.

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