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Game Two Recap: Domination in every sense of the word

The stats from the first two games of this series are phenomenal for the Winnipeg Jets. They have outshot the Minnesota Wild 83-17, outscored the Wild 7-3, and simply outplayed the Wild in every way. They came to play their game in the playoffs, get their first win of post-season and now they look like a train that will be hard for the Wild to stop.

The announcers, particularly Garry Galley, were talking about how you are not in trouble until you lose at home, but after the Jets went on 14-0 shot run in game one, the Wild have needed to make adjustments. It seems like the Jets have been able to make in-game adjustments and that has been all the difference.

Sportsnet has talked about how the Wild are suffering from injuries, but that is also true for the Jets as they do not have Tobias Enstrom, Dmitry Kulikov, and Mathieu Perreault. Jack Roslovic is a great fill in, but whenever a team has to play it’s seventh and eighth defencemen all the time, they deserve some acknowledgments of their injuries form the broadcasters.

As for the idiocy at the end: refs should just toss players and hand them over to league discipline.

Ten Thoughts

  1. The Winnipeg Jets look a lot more like themselves tonight. They were no longer getting stuck in the neutral zone trap and were able to use their speed to their advantage. No matter what Sportsnet tells you; while the Jets can hit, they are much better at scoring and skating faster then you.
  2. Sportsnet is insinuating that the Jets are built for hitting while the Minnesota Wild are not. While they do have some big boys on the team who tend to throw hits, the Jets are a very skilled team with three scoring lines so saying that it benefits them to get into a hitting contest is a lie.
  3. It is amazing to watch Patrik Laine shoot the puck because of the velocity he gets without really moving. He is a remarkable talent that is just getting started in the league. I can hardly wait to see what is to come from his career.
  4. The Jets have shown how well they can dominate against the Wild. Although they said the injuries were not affecting them in the middle of the season, it is apparent how hard it was for them to not have so many centres healthy this year. The only real place of injuries for the Jets now is defence and that looks a lot better when Tobias Enstrom returns at some point. He pushes everyone back to their ideal situation.
  5. Dustin Byfuglien has gotten smarter about his hits. He is hitting guys with force, but not in ways that make it look like it is a penalty. He has been fantastic hitting Jonathan Ericsson-Ek and Mikko Koivu into oblivion as well as every other player it seems. What a lovely change of events this has been.
  6. The Jets utter domination since the third period of Wednesday’s game has continued this game and was capped off by Tyler Myers scoring a beautiful goal using all his skill. Going off of the fourth point, how much better would the Jets be if all the defencemen could play in the best spot in the lineup for themselves and not where injuries have forced them to play.
  7. Devan Dubnyk has been excellent for the Wild. He has been under-fire for a long time and while the Jets could get “goalied”, they are playing so well right not it feels unlikely.
  8. One of the Jets smartest moves is to simply put pucks on net. They are able to generate some rebounds off of Dubnyk by taking shots. At some point they will break him; they are doing too much well to not.
  9. And the floodgates have opened. The Jets continuous pressure led to two quick goals from Paul Stastny and Andrew Copp.
  10. It took the Wild until 5 minutes left in the third period to get a shot on goal. The Jets have been stifling in every sense of the word. The shots have been 83-37. This has been a shellacking.

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