After playing one of the worst hockey games I couldn’t watch, the Winnipeg Jets were quickly back in action against a Washington Capitals team in need of points. With head coach Rick Bowness sidelined back in the Peg, Scott Arniel put his forwards’ names in a blender and gave them a long pulse before he came out with the following line up.
With the dilemma of having both tenders play yesterday, the Jets staff also decided to roll with Connor Hellebuyck in the back-to-back situation, despite him suffering the shame of his first pull of the season. Let’s see if those moves paid off…
Winnipeg definitely looked to have more of a jump to start Sunday’s contest, but it was also equally apparent that Washington was hungry for a victory on home ice. The Jets jumped out with three really strong shifts and their best early opportunity came when Morrissey made a nice spinning pass to spring Ehlers on a 2 on 1 rush. The Danish winger sent a pass across to Appleton, but it might have been a bit early since it resulted in a longer range 1 timer that the Caps’ Lindgren was able to blocker away as he slid across the crease. A point shot by Washington found a lane through a bunch of bodies, only to be denied by Hellebuyck’s pad, but the rebound popped to left of the net and the Jets’ starter had to make a big save to keep it scoreless. The Capitals pushed back with a couple cycle shifts and were rewarded when the stripes called a questionable penalty on Dillon. The Winnipeg PKers did an admirable job while down a man and didn’t even allow the PP a sniff of offense in the 2 minutes. The rest of the period saw a lot of back and forth play, but not in the exciting sense. The teams could rarely penetrate into the scoring areas, though Washington was definitely more successful there. While the Jets led in shots when the horn blew, it was the Caps that had 5 mid/high danger attempts to Winnipeg’s zero. Check out what MoneyPuck has to say about the 1st below.
First Period MoneyPuck Stats: Score: 0 to 0 tie, shots 9 to 8 for the Jets, 66% Deserve To Win for the Capitals, Expected Goals – all situations (1.20-0.38 WSH), & 5 on 5 (1.20-0.38 WSH)
The first shift saw both squads go on rushes up the ice, but good defense once again stopped either from getting a dangerous look. Washington has a good spurt of puck control and Bucky continued to make the required saves when called upon. Those Capital scoring chances were few & far between in a period that saw the Jets get two powerplays and dominate the 5 on 5 play. The visiting squad ended up out-shooting the home team 12-3 in the middle frame, but still all but a few of these came from the perimeter. Winnipeg did have their quality opportunities, with Monahan ringing one off a post, a good cycle shift by the 2nd line giving up a mid-slot shot, and a good defensive play by Perfetti resulting in a dangerous rush by the 4th. The two man-advantages for the Jets did provide plenty of offensive zone time, but the aggressive pursuit by Washington’s PKers didn’t allow time to make pretty passes. Winnipeg did get some looks on the PP (Ehlers redirecting a pass from Niederreiter, Connor being robbed after Monahan sent a cross-ice pass to him for a 1 timer, and Monahan coming close to finding a juicy rebound), but in the end all their shots and puck possession didn’t result in getting any pucks by Lindgren. The Jets did get more quality looks before the period ended, but they ended the frame short-handed when a love tap by Scheifele was viewed as a slash by an official. MoneyPuck’s information below will give you an idea of how much damage each team did in the 2nd period.
After Two Periods MoneyPuck Stats: Score: 0 to 0, shots 21 to 11 for the Jets, 55% Deserve to Win for the Capitals, Expected Goals – all situations (1.61-1.19 WSH) & 5 on 5 (1.49-1.13 WSH)
That late period powerplay for Washington still had over a minute remaining but the PKers started out well. That didn’t last however, as they eventually got stuck in their own end and their defensive box kept getting smaller and smaller. When there was enough space up top, the Caps sent a pass for a Carlson 1 timer from the middle point that I’m fairly sure Hellebuyck never saw. The early period lead gave the home fans something to cheer about and the Capitals responded with inspired play after Lindgren denied Connor a couple times on Winnipeg’s pushback shift. A harmless looking faceoff to the left of Bucky’s crease ended disastrously when the Jets’ center quickly fell to the ice, allowing two Capitals to fight over who was going to shoot on net. Possibly both of them touched the puck, sending it trickling through our goaltenders legs at a pace that makes you wonder why he didn’t just slam his legs shut before it got through the tunnel. That was a back-breaker for any chances of a win, though to give the Jets a little bit of credit, they didn’t fold and tried to find a way to score on Lindgren. Winnipeg did have to deal with an inspired Capital squad now, so the chances were at each end of the ice until Samberg somehow lost where Ovechkin was. The sniper received a pass, walked into the right faceoff dot and cleanly beat Hellebuyck for his 2nd of the game, essentially putting the game on ice. The Jets had more looks on net, but I won’t bothering writing about any of them since none were good enough to break the shut out. After Winnipeg denied Washington the chance to score in the Peg on March 11th, the Capitals returned the favour with their own 3-0 victory on home ice. See what MoneyPuck had to say about the entire game below.
After Three Periods MoneyPuck Stats: 59.4% Deserve to Win for the Jets, Expected Goals – all situations (2.44-2.29 WPG) & 5 on 5 (2.38-1.84 WPG)
FINAL SCORE: WASHINGTON CAPITALS 3 WINNIPEG JETS 0
SHOTS: WINNIPEG JETS 27 WASHINGTON CAPITALS 19
Game Observations:
- I don’t tend to go along with the whole the refs hate my team, but Washington was given three powerplays for fairly light infractions while the striped people seemed to ignore plenty of those done by Capitals. They pretty much tackled Ehlers at one point of the game, but since Sunday is a football day, I guess that made it okay in a hockey contest. The Jets PK has gotten way too passive and only seem to provide any pressure when the puck is close to coming out of their end. Unless you win the race to every rebound, it’s a good way to either get scored on or spend the entire 2 minutes desperately defending your end.
- The Winnipeg Jets take too long to start going for shots from high danger areas. You have to start the game with the mindset that you are going to drive and crash the net and not just go there when it becomes apparent you need to score an ugly goal to win the game.
- The major line changes did result in a better defensive effort, but they didn’t last long either. By the end of the match, the Jets had seven different forward combinations that had over 4 minutes of 5 on 5 ice-time. The starting top 9 got killed, with the 1st, 2nd, & 3rd lines getting 12.2%, 40.4%, & 14.9% respectively. The cream for Winnipeg included the starting 4th line Alex Iafallo, Morgan Barron, Cole Perfetti with 70.7% of expected goals (xG). The other two lines that performed well included the team’s original 3rd line of Nino Niederreiter, Adam Lowry, & Mason Appleton (95.6% xG) and the trio of Vladislav Namestnikov, Sean Monahan, & Tyler Toffoli (96.9% xG).
- When it comes to medium & high danger shot attempts, the Capitals ended with 8 medium & 2 high in the game. The Jets finished with 6 medium and 3 high danger, but couldn’t solve Charlie Lindgren despite putting up 2.5 expected goals.
- Like someone said on another Winnipeg Jets fan forum I visit, today’s result wouldn’t have been a problem if the team hadn’t given away points with terrible performances in New Jersey & Long Island.
The Jets added their fourth losing streak of at least 3 games with today’s loss, still quite a bit behind their eight winning streaks of that same length. But so many of those were in the early parts of the season and there definitely is a reason for concern at this point. For a team that was the model of consistency for the first half of the season, the Winnipeg Jets have found it difficult to put a string of strong performances together. It can’t be the element of surprise catching them off guard, you have to know that teams in the hunt for a playoff spot might actually be hungry for a victory too. The team limps home to reformulate their plan of attack and possibly hope just being near the stern, yet loving Bones will do enough to inspire a return to playing his system properly. Guess we will see when…..
NEXT GAME: Edmonton Oilers @ Winnipeg Jets – Tuesday, March 26th @ 7:00 pm Central
With Connor McDavid, Zach Hyman, & Leon Draisaitl on tap, it might be a good idea to do even more work on those penalty killing units during Monday’s practice. I believe Brad Lambert made history today when he picked up a pair of assists in a Manitoba Moose 5-2 loss. Waiting for confirmation from IllegalCurve, but I think that gives him the most points by a rookie in franchise history (correction: Lambo passed Roslo to become the 4th highest scoring rookie) with 48 in fewer games than Jack Roslovic put up 47 pts.
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