For the first time since the Colorado Avalanche bounced the Winnipeg Jets from last year’s playoffs, these two franchises met to renew their rivalry at the Canada Life Centre in Manitoba. So lets see if our Jets can keep up their historic start to the 2024-25 campaign…
GAME RECAP
When the puck was dropped to kick things off, it was the hometown Winnipeg squad that began the contest as the better team as they outshot Colorado 15 to 9 in the opening frame. With that momentum, it didn’t take the Jets long to get a great chance on the Avalanche’s Alexandar Georgiev. As the Peggers attempted to exit their defensive end along the left boards, Mark Scheifele was able to chip the puck behind the defenseman to spring Winnipeg on a 2 on 1 attack. After carrying the biscuit up the ice, the Jets’ top center slipped a pass by the defender to set up Gabriel Vilardi for the opening goal just a minute into the match. Our squad did have a late powerplay to try to add to their lead, but Vladislav Namestnikov was totally robbed on a rebound from an Alex Iafallo shot. While the home squad controlled the flow of play early, Colorado got a couple good scoring looks but Connor Hellebuyck was there to deny them and maintain Winnipeg’s 1-0 lead going into the intermission.
The 2nd period saw the Avalanche slowly creep back into the contest, as the shot totals evened up to 9 a piece in the middle frame. The Nathan MacKinnon line started to spend more of their shifts in the offensive zone and once again Bucky was called on to keep the game scoreless. The most impressive of Hellebuyck’s 2nd period saves was when he stopped a shot from the low slot, then had to deal with 3 rebound attempts before the danger was over. Winnipeg continued to hold onto a 1 goal lead heading into the 2nd intermission.
The final frame was where the tires kind of fell off the Winnipeg Jets’ game, as they were stuck in a defensive shell for the entire period, getting heavily outshot (17 to 4). Colorado set up in the offensive zone for the majority of the 3rd and while they did penetrate the Jets’ defensive systems at times, Winnipeg did do fairly well at keeping the play to the perimeter of the ice. Head coach Scott Arniel got fed up with the effort he was seeing from his forward units, so once again the line blender was put into action. While the changes didn’t allow the Jets to tilt the ice in another direction, our squad was able to spend a bit more time in the Avs’ zone as a result. It even resulted in the Peggers getting their best scoring chances of the 3rd when Scheifele and Mason Appleton combined to set up Nikolaj Ehlers for a quality look from the low slot. Other than that, continued great goaltending by Hellebuyck and some strong defensive plays (Nino Niederreiter, Dylan Samberg, & Dylan DeMelo) allowed the Winnipeg Jets to hang on, despite a late Colorado powerplay giving them a 6 on 4 player advantage.
FINAL SCORE: Winnipeg 1 Colorado 0
FINAL STATS
Shots: 35-28 COL / Hits: 18-10 COL / Face-Offs: 55.9% WPG / x Goals: 3.63 COL – 2.96 WPG /
MoneyPuck’s Deserve to Win: 65% COL / High Danger Scoring Chances: 14 to 6 COL
SCORING SUMMARY from ESPN
SHOT CHARTS from MoneyPuck & Natural Stat Trick
ADVANCED STATS from MoneyPuck
If you would like to dive deeper into the game’s stats, follow the links below to the game pages:
MoneyPuck: Colorado Avalanche vs. Winnipeg Jets – Thursday November 7 2024 – MoneyPuck.com
NaturalStatTrick: Colorado Avalanche @ Winnipeg Jets, 2024-11-07
BOJA’s Observations:
- The Winnipeg Jets improved their season record to 13-1-0 and now are tied with the Ottawa Senators for the best ever start to an NHL campaign. With a win versus the Dallas Stars on Saturday, our franchise could get their names enshrined in the record books!! Please note that the game against the Stars was bumped forward by a half hour to accommodate the Blue Bombers match on the same day. Puck drop will be a 1:30 pm CST instead of the previously scheduled 2 pm CST start.
- While the Jets do have a great record, so far they are 10-0-0 against last season’s non-playoff teams and 3-1-0 against teams that did qualify (EDM, TOR, TB, & COL).
- What can I say about Connor Hellebuyck? The guy was absolutely terrific last night, not only making his standard positional saves, but also stealing a couple potential goals with terrific reaction stops. Maybe I am trying to make excuses for a bad 3rd period by Winnipeg, but it almost seems like Bucky told his teammates during the 2nd intermission that they could take the rest of the night off because he was going to prove that the Avs couldn’t score on him after last year’s playoff fiasco.
- Bucky was so good, he deserves two whole bulletins….the American tender picked up back-to-back blanks for his 3rd shutout of the season and his 40th of his NHL career. Hellebuyck is now tied for 4th in career shutouts for US-born goalies, 20 blanks behind the leader (Jonathan Quick). Connor now has a 2.10 GAA and a .923 save percentage on the season.
- Morgan Barron got the AIH Preview boost, but it wasn’t enough to get the winger on the scoresheet. He had his chance on an empty net from center ice, but seemed to go for a top corner goal and sailed the puck over the net. Visualize image of Homer going “Doh!!“. Well, I guess the boost can lead a player to a scoring chance, but it is up to them to actually put the puck in the net. Fortunately, the cover photo also included Hellebuyck in the background and the goalie took full advantage of the magic….maybe he used all of it up so there wasn’t any left for Morgan??
- In terms of advanced stats, it is pretty rare to see the top line with the best expected goal rate (47.3%) and the 3rd unit with the worst (12.5%). Really the whole team except the duo of Josh Morrissey and Dylan DeMelo (60.7%) underperformed in this one.
In the end, I thought the Winnipeg Jets played a good game for the first half but seemed to lose their way in the later parts of the contest. Despite being heavily out-played in the second half, I thought our squad didn’t panic when they were stuck in their own end for long periods. They did a good job of staying in position and that allowed Winnipeg defenders to make many key plays (blocks, good sticks to break up pass attempts, tying Avs up, etc).
That being said, the Jets will need a much better effort on the weekend against the Stars if they hope to keep their fairy tale start to the season going.
UP NEXT: Dallas Stars (8-4-0) @ Winnipeg Jets (13-1-0) – Saturday, November 9th @ 1:30 pm CST
