The two National Hockey League franchises that will face off tonight at the Canada Life Centre have been heading in opposite directions lately. The visiting Boston Bruins (18-13-0) have excelled over their past 5 games, walking away with a 4-1-0 record as they have out-scored the opposition 21 to 12. The Winnipeg Jets (14-14-1) on the other hand, have a 1-3-1 record over the same span, while being out-paced 19-12 in the goal department.
The True Northers have reached new depths as they sit in a tie for the 5th worst record in the NHL, while the Bean Towners are in a three-way tie for the 10th best. Probably quite a few pundits had things predicted differently for the defending Presidents’ Trophy winners and a club that finished in a tie for the 4th worst record in the league. The jinx of being the best regular season team in the NHL appears to be real, as our Jets need to make quite the transformation in the final 65% of the season if they hope to avoid the list of teams that failed to qualify for the playoffs after winning that piece of hardware.
On the bright side for Winnipeg’s future win-loss record, starting goaltender Connor Hellebuyck appears to be making a very quick recovery from knee surgery, as he has hit the ice the past two days and some media are even reporting that they expect Bucky to be back in the crease as early as next week. There are more issues to solve than goaltending for our club, but his return could very likely turn some games from defeats to victories.
Lets jump to a look at Winnipeg & Boston’s seasons by checking out ESPN‘s team & goaltender comparison numbers:
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The team stats above don’t suggest a huge difference between the two franchises, with most numbers being close except for the Bruins’ lead in categories like penalty minutes, powerplay, & penalty killing. Jeremy Swayman has bounced back from an off year and has provided the east coast franchise with quality play in the net. Jets’ tender Eric Comrie has played very well while filling in for the injured Bucky, yet the stat line & win-loss record doesn’t show that much because of how the club has played in front of him.
Winnipeg did not do line rushes during their skate today, so no real insight as to what the roster will look like….other than the fact that Gustav Nyquist was deployed on the 2nd powerplay unit, which suggests that he will be back in the line up after missing a couple contests. No clue who is coming out, though Illegal Curve is suggesting it will be Tanner Pearson.
Keeping that in mind, lets move on & go check out PuckPedia‘s predicted line ups for tonight’s clash, which are based on the club’s last games:
WINNIPEG JETS LINE UP
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BOSTON BRUINS LINE UP
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Boston’s biggest stars this year have been forwards David Pastrnak & Morgan Geekie, who have both exploded for 32 points. Winnipeg can counter with their own dynamic duo in Mark Scheifele & Kyle Connor, who have amassed 38 & 37 points respectively.
Of course, the difference comes when you look at the secondary scorers, with the Bruins have a huge advantage over the Jets in that area. The B’s have 14 different skaters with at least 10 points in 2025-26, compared to just 7 for the True Northers. That explains why Boston is out-scoring Winnipeg 101 to 88 this year.
The Jets’ most recent game was fairly competitive and actually somewhat enjoyable to watch. Can our team put up 2 in a row?? We will have to wait for the 7 pm Central start to find out.
Go Winnipeg!!!!!
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POST-GAME INFO
Scoring Summary: (courtesy of ESPN)
FINAL SCORE: Boston Bruins 6 Winnipeg Jets 3
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Game Stats: (courtesy of MoneyPuck)
Expected Goals (all): WPG 4.04 BOS 3.78
Expected Goals (5on5): WPG 3.03 BOS 1.76
These are the types of stats that were way more common last season. The Jets dominated 5 on 5 play against the Bruins, though part of that is likely due to the early 3 goal lead Winnipeg spotted the visitors.
For the first time in a while, Winnipeg pretty much only used their starting 4 forward lines, with the original 1st line of Connor, Scheifele, & Vilardi seeing just 1:25 of time together to sit in 5th. The advanced stats say 3 out of 4 units did well enough to win the xG battle, with the Namestnikov trio being the exception. That unit also allowed 1 of Boston’s 5 on 5 goals, while the the Jets’ top line lost the actual goal battle 2 to 1 to the Bruins. Might be the best game Toews has played this season and I like to see the Lowry trio dictating the flow of play again. Lot of good signs for the True Northers tonight up front…but still searching for an adequate 2nd line combination. Moving Vilardi down was a good idea to try, but since he isn’t much faster than Perfetti & Namestnikov, might it be better to split up the team’s dynamic duo to put speed on both units? Doubt the team does that though.
The defense didn’t escape the shuffle, with 7 combinations playing more than 2:45 at even strength. The top 2 pairings had more than 9 minutes, while the middle three d-men skated for 4:30 to 6:00 minutes. Samberg was once again the best statistic defender, with both of his pairings above the 50% mark. Morrissey also had good numbers for most of his pairings. The goals against tonight were against the Morrissey-Pionk and Stanley-Schenn duos, while Morrissey-DeMelo & Samberg-DeMelo were on the ice for Winnipeg’s 5 on 5 goals.
The roughest outing of Comrie’s time as a replacement for the injured Hellebuyck. While his save percentage has been poor the last 3 starts, the other two losses saw way more high danger scoring opportunities than tonight’s game, so it was somewhat understandable (had a positive GSAE rating vs the Stars). As good as the Washington Capitals are….I think the coaches have to go with Dominic DiVincentiis on Saturday to give Eric a break. Hopefully playing in front of a rookie against the Caps will produce a similar effort as tonight and maybe we can catch the opposition taking the lowly Jets lightly?
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BOJA’S Post-Game Thoughts:
Too tired to go into details….but a rough start was too much to overcome. Definitely positives to be taken from back-to-back games…if you want to search for a silver lining. That means if they can keep that up, Hellebuyck may be able to start Winnipeg moving up the standings. But is it too late to really turn things around enough to make noise in the post-season?? Probably without a major transaction taking place to really alter the dynamic of this version of the Jets.
