I’m not going to sugarcoat anything here. The Jets are terrible right now. In the final game of their 6-game road trip, though the All-Star Break was in the middle, the Winnipeg Jets were embarrassed on National TV again in dropping a 3-0 decision to the 15th-place Montreal Canadiens. The matinee was shown across the nation on Hockey Night in Canada on the CBC, and the Jets continued to do what they do best. Unfortunately, what they do best right now is not score goals. In what can probably the only positive taken from this game, the Jets didn’t let Scott Gomez score on the one-year anniversary since his last goal. I suppose that is a small victory.
In these past six road games, the Jets have scored six goals in total. However, one of those was Bryan Little’s shootout winner against the Flyers, and another was Kyle Wellwood’s OT winner against the Lightning. Take those two away, and that is four regulation goals scored in the past six games. That is almost laughable. Sam Gagner is mocking us right now. To make matters even worse, the amount of fight in the team today was virtually non-existent, and that is the most frustrating thing of all.
This loss was a devastating defeat, as it drops us to 24-24-6 and keeps us at 54 points and firmly entrenched in the 10th spot in the East. We remain six points behind the 8th-place Toronto Maple Leafs, yet somehow only five points behind the 3rd-place Florida Panthers, but all of these teams have multiple games in hand on us. Even worse (or is it?) is that with the Habs beating us today we are now only five points up on 15th spot in the East. Perhaps it isn’t too late to #FailForNail or #SinkForGrink…
1st Period: 18:02 MTL Max Pacioretty 19 (Yannick Weber, Aaron Palushaj)
2nd Period: 7:20 MTL Alexei Emelin 2 SH (Tomas Plekanec, Mathieu Darche) 11:28 MTL Tomas Plekanec 11 PP (Tomas Kaberle, P.K. Subban)
3rd Period: No Scoring
Shots: Winnipeg 23 Montreal 23
3 Stars: 1) Carey Price 2) Tomas Plekanec 3) Alexei Emelin
Thoughts from the Tarmac:
- We simply cannot score. We went 2-4 on the road trip, and somehow managed to only score 6 goals in total. We were shutout twice, and only managed one goal in regulation in the other four. If it wasn’t for the heroics of Ondrej Pavelec to only allow one goal in two of those games, we likely go 0-6 on the trip.
- Making matters worse, we lost to the Carolina Hurricanes and the Montreal Canadiens, who at the time of each game were last in the Eastern Conference. That isn’t exactly taking care of business.
- Our PP looked flat-out awful today. Not only did it not score, but it gave up a shortie to noted marksmen Alexei Emelin. Oh well, I’ll say it again, at least it wasn’t Gomez.
- I think I saw some glimpses of the ol’ Bustin today. Even P.J. Stock saw it too, drilling Buff in the 1st intermission by saying that “he’s absolutely lazy.” Sure someone should have covered for him on that short-handed goal against, but he was 4th man back. That’s lazy. And if his knee isn’t 100%, then play him less. He saw over 22 minutes again.
- Zach Bogosian played well again I thought. He played over 24 minutes and looked solid throughout. What’s even more impressive is that he looked good while playing alongside Ron Hainsey. That’s tough to do.
- Blake Wheeler showed a little bit of emotion at least. Unfortunately, his stupid penalty after the whistle was the one that we got scored on to make it a 3-0 deficit. Play between the whistles, Wheels.
- The two best forwards today? Spencer Machacek and Antti Miettinen. If that doesn’t say it all, I don’t know what does. Miettinen led the team in shots with five in only 11:54 of ice time, while Machacek was second with four shots in 7:47. Why Noel didn’t play them more when they were the only ones going is beyond me.
- Eric Fehr drew the short straw today, earning the healthy scratch this afternoon. I thought he’d been better of late, but Noel obviously thought differently. After how Machacek played I’m not sure he comes out next game.
- Hard to blame Pavelec. It was a shooting gallery out there for the Habs, who once again were the last-place team in the East coming into today and they played yesterday too. There is no excuse for this poor effort.
- I don’t know where we can go next as a team. The compete level was way too low for such an important game, and we were the rested team. The sad thing here is that if players are trying to get themselves traded, who would want any of them if they are playing like this?
- The Jets return home for a quick stay, as they play host to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday before heading out on the road for two in Washington and Pittsburgh. If we aren’t done already, we certainly will be if we don’t earn 4 or 5 points out of these three games.
- We have 10 more games before the Trade Deadline on February 27th, but we also play the Oilers that evening at home. I seriously wonder what our squad will look like for that game. I’m already a little worried about what Sam Gagner will do to us in that game.
