Sens just have Jets’ number

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/03/2015 (3341 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are times when Ottawa and Winnipeg just don’t go together well, at least not for Winnipeg.

You’ve got your CF-18 story, and the infamous peanut butter incident at the old Arena in the days of Jets 1.0.

It continues in the modern era as the Ottawa Senators just make life miserable for the Winnipeg Jets at the MTS Centre, Wednesday night taking a fifth straight win since the 2011 NHL relocation, this time 3-1 over the hometown Jets.

If you need someone to blame for the Jets’ home-ice points streak being stopped at seven games (5-0-2), pick on Sens goalie Andrew Hammond.

The 27-year-old, recalled Jan. 29, is now 6-0-1 since taking over the net from the injured Craig Anderson and Robin Lehner.

Maybe coach Dave Cameron’s biggest blunder since assuming command last fall was not putting Hammond in the crease sooner.

And the Jets weren’t exactly snipers on Wednesday night.

They mustered 36 shots and made the fancy-stats look rather irrelevant on Wednesday (ahead 69-37 on shot attempts). But on many shots, well, that Senator on Hammond’s chest is likely to have a concussion today, having been beaned by a puck so many times in the game.

The defeat drops the Jets to 32-21-12 and stalls them at 76 points in the ever-tightening Western Conference playoff race. Winnipeg stayed one point ahead of Minnesota in the wild-card battle, but the Wild now have two games in hand.

Hand it to Hammond

Other than Michael Frolik’s goal 5:46 into the third to cut it to 3-1, the Jets had no luck around the Ottawa net.

Many times they didn’t make the best shots, but there were a few that were five-bell saves. Let us permit Jets coach Paul Maurice to outline them.

“The save he made on Andrew Ladd was real good,” Maurice said about a great first-period chance Hammond stopped with his right toe. “We’ve still got some belief there. We’re at 15 (shots) after the first period and down one. You don’t like that.

“You’re a little concerned when Jiri (Tlusty) hits the post on the empty net and when (Lee) Stempniak hits him in the forehead off the two-on-one with all that mesh staring at you, then you’ve got a big concern.

“And we’ll go back and find all the things we didn’t like about our game but at the end of the day, their guy was real good.”

First not worst

Winnipeg’s first period Wednesday was a better-than-average effort.

Ahead 15-6 in shots, clearly dominating the game physically, the home team just couldn’t solve Hammond.

All Ottawa had to show for the 20 minutes was Kyle Turris’s nasty-accurate shot behind Michael Hutchinson and lot of dump-outs and Hail Mary passes.

Not enough Buff

Jets defenceman Dustin Byfuglien had to leave the game at Eric Condra’s 3-0 goal 11:54 of the second period, and could not return.

The team said he was out with an upper-body problem, and Maurice said after the game he won’t know anything more until today, which is an off-day for the team.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

Business Weekly

Monday mornings

The latest local business news and a lookahead to the coming week.

Sign up for Business Weekly

Sign Up

I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Hutch hitch

Maurice gave Jets starter Michael Hutchinson the hook after Condra’s goal, saying afterward he didn’t think Hutchinson looked particularly “comfortable” in the outing.

Still, despite a couple of puck-handling adventures on the night, Hutchinson (19-8-5) was hardly to blame that Ottawa snipers Turris, Bobby Ryan and Condra wired accurate shots to corners — Turris’s was off the far post — something Jets snipers simply did not do on this night.

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca

Note: Can’t see the live-coverage box on this page? View it in a new window.