The Winnipeg Jets had the aim of extending their amazing winning streak to start the 2024-25 campaign on Saturday, but the hot Calgary Flames had their own ideas of how the game would play out. Will the True North franchise be the 9th team in league history to start the season with a 8-0-0 record??
The Jets’ coaching staff opted to give starter Connor Hellebuyck a night off, so it was going to be Winnipeg’s Eric Comrie going up against Calgary’s Dustin Wolf in a battle of the under-sized tenders.
Here is how coach Scott Arniel deployed his players last night, via PuckPedia’s great website:
GAME RECAP
This ended up being quite the crazy hockey game, with all sorts of odd things occurring throughout the match. On the first shift of the game, the Calgary Flames get the first break of the contest when a shot from a terrible angle clanked off Eric Comrie’s mask and into the small short-side top corner to give the home team an early 1-0 lead. After that, it was Winnipeg who controlled the flow of play and it resulted in a powerplay shortly after they fell behind. The Jets’ hot PP took only 7 seconds to set up Nikolaj Ehlers for his 4th marker of the year as Winnipeg tied things up with over 18 minutes to play in the opening frame. The True Northers dominated the shot count in the 1st (16-6), however they struggled to get another puck past the Flames’ Dustin Wolf. Calgary got a late period man-advantage, but their hopes of using it to tie up the game were dashed when Adam Lowry & Kyle Connor broke out on a short-handed 2 on 1. Winnipeg’s captain carried the puck up the ice before sliding it off to Connor, who did an excellent job of holding off the back-checking Flame while cleanly beating Wolf to give the Jets a 2-1 lead.
The 2nd period was one to forget for the Winnipeg Jets, as they paraded to the box and allowed Calgary to tilt the momentum in their favour (shots 12-4 for the Flames). Comrie had settled down after the early Flames’ goal snuck by him and the Jets’ backup made a bunch of top-notch saves to keep the biscuit out of his net. Getting late into the 2nd and just as Jets’ fans started to think our team would escape the period with a lead despite Calgary’s onslaught, the Flames pull off a repeat of their first bad angle goal when Rasmus Andersson sends another shot from along the goal line to bounce of Comrie’s cage & into his net.
The 3rd period saw the strangeness continue, but it was Winnipeg who was on the good side of the play when a Dylan Samberg point shot bounced off the back boards only to hit the Flames’ goalie in the back and give the Jets a 3-2 lead early in the frame. Calgary wouldn’t go away as they responded with a marker from Nazim Kadri just 3 minutes later, forcing Winnipeg to go back on the attack. Their pressure paid off with offensive zone time and eventually drawing a couple Flame penalties to give the Jets a huge 5 on 3 powerplay. While our squad controlled the puck and sent numerous chances towards the Flames net, they couldn’t find the go-ahead goal (despite Josh Morrissey clanging the post). With 5 minutes left in the game, Neal Pionk was skating behind his own net when Kadri slashed his hands, causing the Jets’ defender to lose possession of the puck. The ref correctly raised his arm to make the call, sending Winnipeg back to another powerplay. This time the Jets’ hot PP made sure they capitalized when Nino Niederreiter set up Cole Perfetti from behind the net for the game winner. That resulted in Calgary losing their heads complaining about the last penalty, which resulted in Kadri being kicked off the ice and the Flames going back to the box after Mason Appleton sealed the game with an empty netter.
FINAL SCORE: Winnipeg 5 Calgary 3
FINAL STATS
Shots: 35-30 WPG / Hits: 31-18 CGY / Face-Offs: 53.4% CGY / Expected Goals: 3.76 WPG – 2.31 CGY /
MoneyPuck’s Deserve to Win: 61.8% WPG / High Danger Scoring Chances: 9 to 8 CGY
SCORING SUMMARY from ESPN
SHOT CHART from MoneyPuck & NaturalStatTrick
ADVANCED STATS from MoneyPuck & NaturalStatTrick
ADVANCED STATS for Line Combos from MoneyPuck & NaturalStatTrick
If you would like to dive deeper into the game’s stats, follow the links below to the game pages:
MoneyPuck: Winnipeg Jets vs. Calgary Flames – Saturday October 26 2024 – MoneyPuck.com
NaturalStatTrick: Winnipeg Jets @ Calgary Flames, 2024-10-26
BOJA’s Observations:
- Winnipeg’s special teams continue to impress. The powerplay went 2 for 4 versus Calgary, including the eventual game winning goal. The penalty kill was even better, going a perfect 4 for 4 and chipping in a short-hand marker. Did anyone think a couple new coaches would vault the Jets into the league’s top 10 special teams?
- The True North franchise continues to get an unexpected level of offense from it’s roster, as they currently have EIGHT players averaging at least a point per game!! Quite the mix in that group, two 1st line forwards, two 2nd line forwards, two 3rd line forwards, top pairing d-man, & 2nd pairing d-man. Can’t spread out the offense anymore than that!!
- And it is not like the rest of the line up is struggling either…
- Okay, it wasn’t the best game of Eric Comrie’s career (.897 save %), but Winnipeg’s back up made quite a few timely stops on quality chances. His -0.69 Goals Saved Above Expected rating wasn’t too bad, but all three goals against came on shots from low danger locations. In particular, Comrie fed the myth that NHL goalies need to be huge, as he allowed a couple goals to sneak over his shoulder on the short-side. The Jets actually did a better job at limiting shots from right out front in this one, so Eric probably missed out on the chance to put up another stellar performance.
- Talk about getting hot all of a sudden, but newly inked Cole Perfetti has 9 points in his past 5 contests. Great news that Winnipeg’s 2nd line is finally finding the chemistry they need to control the flow of play (team leading 70.6% xG).
- Three out of four Winnipeg forward units won the expected goal battle versus Calgary, but the coaching staff has to be concerned about the play of the top line of Mark Scheifele, Kyle Connor, and Gabriel Vilardi. For the most part, I think the effort is there from all three skaters so that worries me that the players just don’t fit together well. I love what I see from Vilardi when the puck is on his stick on the powerplay, but I want to see more of that at even strength when the 1st line is often stuck defending. Not sure that coach Scott Arniel will want to mess with the Jets’ 2nd & 3rd lines at the moment, so it seems that Winnipeg will just keep going as is until it starts costing them wins.
Well, the Winnipeg Jets completed their first multiple game road trip of the season and will now return home for a one game homestand. Unfortunately for those without Amazon Prime, the Jets upcoming game will only be available through that service. Can Winnipeg extend their winning streak to 9 against the hated Leafs???
UP NEXT: Toronto Maple Leafs (4-4-1) @ Winnipeg Jets (8-0-0) – Monday, October 28th @ 6:30 pm CST
