The Afterburners: Jets Ignore Sign, Feed the Animals

The Jets came into this game really needing a convincing regulation win against a division opponent, and they certainly played like it. To pretty much any observer, the Jets controlled the action of the game tonight and roundly outshot Florida, yet they simply could not curb the missed shots and defensive mistakes. As expected, Ron Hainsey made an ugly turnover that led to a goal, as did Johnny Oduya, and it could even be argued that the venerable Tobias Enstrom (or Bryan Little, or both players) could be blamed for the 3rd goal. Regardless, Ondrej Pavelec had another solid game, making a number of huge saves late in regulation and in the shootout, but to no avail.

Info and comments after the jump.

1st Period: 5:40 Florida ES Goal, Kris Versteeg 18 (Marcel Goc 4); 19:44 Florida ES Goal, Mike Santorelli 6 (Krys Barch 2, Kris Versteeg 23)

2nd Period: 5:06 Winnipeg PP Goal, Nik Antropov 7 (Kyle Wellwood 20)

3rd Period: 5:54 Winnipeg ES Goal, Nik Antropov 8 (Andrew Ladd 9, Kyle Wellwood 21); 6:51 Florida ES Goal, Kris Versteeg 19 (unassisted); 13:45 Winnipeg ES Goal, Alexander Burmistrov 9 (Tobias Enstrom 14, Antti Miettinen 3)

Shots: Winnipeg 44, Florida 23

Three Stars: 1. Kris Versteeg 2. Nik Antropov 3. Kyle Wellwood

Thoughts

• The carelessness in our own zone was a recurrent theme, on a par with taking bad minor penalties (don't worry, we did that too). We play an excellent game at evens, but we also continually break our backs with these mistakes. An overwhelming majority of them are plays to the middle of the ice in our own zone, the kind of risk that NHL players should not be taking.
• I put Welly with the 3rd star because he was creating excellent plays in the offensive zone. In general, we were doing a sensational job of setting up in the zone and making opportunities, but we have to hit the net and we can't offset it with mistakes in our zone.
• Mark Stuart dropped Versteeg like a bad habit, which made me promptly wonder why we weren't doing that more often. Since, you know, about 1/5 of all his points have come against us in three games.
• It was good...no, check that, great, to have Boogie back. He was bombing the puck, and making plays, and in general looked pretty solid.
• Two of our first 3 shooters in the shootout straight-up missed the net. Welly, being the guy he is, didn't, and scored.
• If we continue to play the possession game at this level, we can challenge a majority of the teams in the league. We were doing a lot of things right, and it is a crying shame it came down to a couple of mistakes. But that's hockey.
• Once again, hats off to Pavs. He deserved the 3-1 victory he earned, not the painstaking 3-4 loss in a prolonged shootout.