And here we go! The 2019 NHL Playoffs get underway with five games tonight and the Winnipeg Jets are right in the middle of everything opening up their series against the St. Louis Blues.

A lot has been made of the fact that the Blues have flat out been one of the hottest teams in the entire league over the last two months, while the Jets have stumbled and played barely above .500 hockey as they crossed the regular season finish line. The Jets at least get defenseman Josh Morrissey back into the lineup as he’s been out since the end of February with an upper body injury.

In fact this is the first time since the end of December that the Jets defense has been fully healthy as Dustin Byfuglien also missed a bunch of time from the end of December moving forward. The return to full health comes not a moment too soon as Winnipeg could be locked in a tough, defensive battle with a Blues team that isn’t afraid to grind out games.

It was back in December of 2018 when the Blues and Jets met for the fourth and final time of the season with the Blues skating away with a hard fought 1-0 victory. Jake Allen made 27 stops and Colton Parayko was the lone goal scorer in the second period on a power play.

As crazy as it seems given their bad habit of giving up third period leads, the Jets need to get a multi-goal lead on the Blues. Get in the head of the rookie goalie and force the Blues into playing a more offensive minded game. The Jets need to turn this game into a run-n-shoot blitz.

Mark Scheifele finished the playoffs last season with 14 goals in 17 games as he set an NHL record for most road goals in a playoff series with seven in the second round against Nashville. In the three rounds Winnipeg was in last season, Scheifele scored 33.3% of the Jets goals as he had a phenomenal 31.1% shooting percentage.

Same thing they’ve been doing for the last two months… Get steady defensive work, strong goaltending and find just enough offense early enough that they can get a lead and lean on the first two and quite frankly better parts of their game. This is a club that is fine playing tight checking, one goal games as four of their last five games have all needed extra time to settle them.

The playoffs have a ripe history of rookie goaltenders who come in and absolutely dominate – you only have to look as 2016 when Matt Murray came out of seemingly nowhere to lead the Pittsburgh Penguins to a Stanley Cup – but the ledger of goalies who falter once they hit the post season is a much thicker book and tonight we’ll begin to find out what side of history 25 year old rookie Jordan Binnington will fall on in his rookie playoff campaign. He was brilliant this past rookie season with a 24-5-1 record and a .927 save percentage in 30 starts with the Blues. He was the NHL’s rookie of the month in both February and March.