The long wait is finally over…..the National Hockey League Playoffs kicked off with the league leading Winnipeg Jets taking on the St. Louis Blues in the opening round on Saturday evening. A contest featuring the #1 ranked Jets squaring off against the #8 ranked Blues would give one of these franchises the opportunity to pick up the first victory of the NHL 2024-25 post-season.
The fans in Manitoba donned their brightest whites and converged on the Canada Life Center to cheer on the True Northers, filling the arena to it’s rafters and surrounding the CLC in White Out conditions. The excitement was palatable and the house was rocking as SoulBear belted out the appropriate national anthems prior to the puck drop. This is what happened after that…..
GAME RECAP
It was St. Louis who ended up winning the opening face-off and that allowed them immediately start a ferocious forecheck that caused Winnipeg’s defenders all kinds of difficulties and allowed the Blues to tilt the ice in their favour early on. The visitors had a gameplan in mind right from the start and they implemented that by throwing bodychecks at any Jet player they happened to come across (24 hits in 1st). Despite the Blues quick start, it was the hometown club that managed the first shot on net 4 minutes in when defenseman Dylan Samberg tested St. Louis’ Jordan Binnington. Winnipeg started to pick up the physical play after captain Adam Lowry threw a big hit on the forecheck, but the Manitobans were losing quite a few of the puck battles and that allowed the Blues to spend more time in the offensive zone. Eventually that possession paid off when Luke Schenn was called for a questionable interference call during a net front battle. The Jets started off well by clearing the puck quickly and aggressively pursuing the puck carrier when St. Louis was able to get set up. Unfortunately, a bit of over-pursuit saw Dylan DeMelo isolated on a 2 on 1, allowing Blues’ star Robert Thomas the time to pick his corner and deliver the perfect shot over Connor Hellebuyck’s shoulder. STL 1-0. The away squad got a boost from that and they continued to press for more offense, forcing Bucky to make a big save from the slot before a slashing penalty by St. Louis allowed Winnipeg to ease the pressure. The NHL’s number 1 powerplay was able to get set up immediately and the puck made its way to Mark Scheifele down low to the left of the Blues’ net. The Jets’ top pivot thought he saw a lane cross crease to Kyle Connor for the back door tap in, but the pass attempt deflected off a defender’s stick and flew over Binnington’s shoulder to knot the game up. TIE 1-1. Winnipeg’s 4th line followed that up with a forecheck that allowed them to gain possession and send the puck back to the point. Noticing that he had plenty of traffic in front of the goalie, Schenn let a shot go and as the puck was on route it was deflected by Morgan Barron & Jaret Anderson-Dolan before bouncing off the ice & in between Binnington’s pads. WPG 2-1. The Jets tried to push for a two goal lead with a couple solid shifts, but then St. Louis had a long cycle shift in Winnipeg’s end. The defenders did well to keep things to the outside and blocked the first couple of shot attempts, but when Schenn tried to intercept a pass attempt by kicking the puck up to his stick, he missed the second part of his plan, allowing the puck to trickle across the slot to an open Blue and tying the game up once again. TIE 2-2. In a sign of what was going to come for the rest of the match, the late first saw a post-whistle wrestling match and the refs decided to give Neal Pionk a penalty for a headlock in the midst of all the chaos. With only seconds left in the opening frame, the Jets were able to enter the intermission deadlocked.
Winnipeg started the 2nd off short-handed and did a great job early on in the kill, but St. Louis was able to get set up in the final minute of the powerplay. A cycle saw the puck work its was to Jordan Kyrou at the top of the right face-off circle and with Josh Morrissey providing a long screen & a net-front Blue player reducing Hellebuyck’s vision even more, St. Louis was able to retake their lead when a wrist shot sailed into the top corner. STL 3-2. Falling behind once again appeared to wake up the Jets and the club started to play like they have all year and that led to an unsuccessful PP attempt. However, Winnipeg began to control the puck more and get more quality looks on the Blues’ net, including Kyle Connor undressing the tender, yet wasn’t able to complete the play by tucking the puck into the net. St. Louis were able to try to stretch their lead with a couple counter-attacks, by Bucky denied a 4 on 2 rush & a couple of breakaways to keep his team in the game. In the final minute of the period, the Jets’ 2nd line were buzzing around looking for the equalizer and while they were unsuccessful, they did earn another powerplay opportunity when Vladislav Namestnikov was pulled down going for a rebound. With little time left before the 3rd, the man-advantage attack would have to wait until after the intermission.
After out-shooting St. Louis 10-6 in the middle frame, Winnipeg really took control in the final period and it began with an unsuccessful PP that saw a couple good scoring looks being denied. As the Jets started to push on the attack, the Blues attempted to counter with flip zone clearances in the hopes one of their forwards could be sprung on a rush. Eventually it worked and Samberg was required to grab hold of the St. Louis player to stop another quality scoring chance on Bucky. The fans in the arena got nervous as the 0 for 2 penalty killers stepped on the ice, but they did a good job early of keeping the attackers to the perimeter and blocking any pucks entering the low slot. When Winnipeg cleared the zone and went for a line change, rookie Zach Bolduc took a bone-headed penalty when he cross-checked an unsuspecting Alex Iafallo. This ended the Blues’ PP and gave the Jets a short one, but it wasn’t until 3 minutes later that the next goal came. Winnipeg’s top line dumped the puck into the offensive zone and Scheifele went after it, winning the puck battle along the back boards before skating behind St. Louis’ net. As he emerged from the other side, he spun to send a pass to the crease area, allowing the puck to bounce off Binnington’s pads and out to Iafallo on the right side of the blue paint. The veteran made no mistake as he slid the puck to the open far-side corner, sending the fans at the CLC into a frenzy. TIE 3-3. With just over half a period to play, the Jets were able to stifle any offensive attacks by the Blues (WPG 9-2 in the shot department in the 3rd) but weren’t having much success in creating high danger looks of their own. That was until that last 2 minutes of play…..when Scheifele skated up the left offensive boards to receive a pass, then cut across the top of the face-off circle before sending a perfect pass through the seam to a waiting Connor for the game-winning 1 timer. WPG 4-3. All that was left was a couple more post-whistle wrestling matches and a Lowry empty netter and the Winnipeg Jets opened up the playoffs with a victory!!
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FINAL SCORE: WINNIPEG JETS 5 ST. LOUIS BLUES 3
FINAL STATS
Shots: 26-17 WPG / Hits: 53-33 STL / Face-Offs: 55.7% STL / x Goals: 3.70 WPG – 1.82 STL /
MoneyPuck’s Deserve to Win: 56% WPG / High-Medium Danger Scoring Chances: 7 to 5 WPG
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SCORING SUMMARY from ESPN
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SHOT CHART from MoneyPuck
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ADVANCED SKATER STATS from MoneyPuck
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GOALIE STATS from ESPN & MoneyPuck
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If you would like to dive deeper into the game’s stats, follow the links below to the game pages:
MoneyPuck: St. Louis Blues vs. Winnipeg Jets – Saturday April 19 2025 – MoneyPuck.com
NaturalStatTrick: St Louis Blues @ Winnipeg Jets, 2025-04-19
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BOJA’s Observations:
- Nerves. I guess it doesn’t matter if you’ve been through the scenario once or twice, the atmosphere at the Canada Life Centre in the playoffs, combined with the pressure of performing well in the NHL’s second season got to our Winnipeg Jets once again. Kudos to them for eventually settling down and getting back to the style of hockey that has made them very successful. But it was an anxiety-filled evening for us fans while we waited for that to occur.
- The St. Louis Blues had their game plan…..forecheck hard & hitting anything that moves. It paid big dividends in the 1st period (24 hits), but even though the bodychecks didn’t abate in the 2nd (22) the Jets were able to handle the physical play much more effectively. All that hitting wears a player down though and the visitors were only able to manage 7 more hits in the final frame. The Blues’ forecheck caused so many failed zone exits in the 1st, but Winnipeg’s players & coaching staff responded well by making the necessary adjustments to clean things up for the rest of the match.
- Based on the advanced stats, pretty much all the forward lines & defensive pairings had good games at even strength, with only the Mark Scheifele trio finishing below 50%. Yet those three players provided the big moments, with Scheifele scoring the opening goal and setting up the eventual game tying (Alex Iafallo) & winning goals (Kyle Connor). Not only that, but the 1st line had 3 of the Jets’ 5 goals & 10 of the Jets’ 26 shots…so they were definitely involved offensively.
- I thought the bottom six looked pretty solid all game and a big congratulations to Jaret Anderson-Dolan for scoring his first ever NHL playoff goal. Nice hand-eye to get the second deflection and great to see him rewarded for his feisty play since being called up from the Manitoba Moose.
- And I will end on a defense of goaltender Connor Hellebuyck. Yes, the stats were not pretty, but I can’t really say any of the 3 goals against should have been stopped. The first GA was from St. Louis’ best sniper standing at the left face-off dot with tons of time and a passing option…a perfect shot beats Bucky up high. The second GA was during a net front scramble when his own defender inadvertently set up a Blues’ player for a quality low slot attempt. The final GA was from a long way out, but Josh Morrissey failed to block the shot attempt and instead completely stopped his tender from seeing the puck until the last moment. This was made worse by a St. Louis player to the goalie’s left, which made Hellebuyck move right, while slightly crouching down to get a better site line. It was that last thing that was the most costly, since it meant that his blocker hand was lower than needed to stop the shot to the top corner. All that being said, Bucky did appear to be nervous to start the game and some puck handling adventures led to unnecessary St. Louis cycles, so I am in no way saying that he played great on Saturday. Hellebuyck did make a few huge saves to keep the Jets within striking distances….and timely saves are very important come playoff time.
The only other NHL action saw the Dallas Stars statistically outplay the Colorado Avalanche, but the Texans failure to beat Mackenzie Blackwood consistently led to the home team dropping the opening contest of their series.
The Jets will be off for Easter Sunday and then will be back at it on Monday…..enjoy your weekend everyone and let me hear your thoughts of the game in the Comment section below.
UP NEXT: GAME 2 – St. Louis Blues @ Winnipeg Jets – Monday, April 21st @ 6:30 pm CST
