About Last Night: Don’t. Panic.

The streak… Is over.

The Jets saw their run of perfect Sundays come to a grinding halt thanks to some great goaltending from Lundqvist and a couple of misplays on the defensive end.

By the way, I know the game was technically in the afternoon, but when trying to establish a regular feature on a website, it’s important to stick with a title and besides “About Yesterday Mid-afternoon / Early Evening” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

The Jets have finally suffered back to back home losses this season which is kind of remarkable and a great indication of how good this team has been all season. For what it’s worth, I thought the Jets played well enough for most of the game to win, but simply ran into a buzzsaw of a goalie named Henrik Lundqvist. Othewerwise, that level of play we saw from the Jets Sunday will win games most nights. At the very least it was a sharp improvement from the lackluster play we saw on Friday night against the Blues.

The Jets confidence in their ability to make plays on offense and still be a defenseivly responsible team is a positive for the most part, but I do think the team is also prone to some moments of over-confidence such as a defenseman like Tyler Myers or Dustin Byfuglien pinching too low when the situation doesn’t call for it, or – as was the case of the Rangers first goal – when a forward tries to make an unnessacary ‘creative’ pass. Nik Ehlers was trying to make a play and maintain puck possession for his team but was burned when his drop pass slid into no-mans-land and was picked up by a dashing Mats Zuccarello who promptly cashed in the mistake because really, that’s just how hockey works.

It’s a double edge sword because with as much talent as the Jets have you don’t want to take away the aspect of being creative and aggressive with their offense, but in the last minute of play in a period you completely had control of, it was an opening just handed to the Rangers that they were able to build off of and have a strong second period. So in the end I think you allow players like Nik Ehlers and Dustin Byfuglien have the freedom to be creative, be daring and make plays, but remind them that they need to know what the situation at certain times of the game would call for.

Six minutes, 23 seconds.

That is how much ice time both Nic Petan and Jack Roslovic were given in the game each.

Nic Petan I kind of get, it’s already well established at this point that for whatever reason, Paul Maurice is not a Nic Petan guy.

But Jack Roslovic was working on a three game point streak and had looked good playing with the top line. He also looked pretty good with Petan and Kyle Connor on the fourth line against St. Louis. Although Jack also had limited ice time in that game as well.

If anyone can shed some light or ask Paul Maurice at the next press gathering what caused Rosolovic to go from over 15 minutes of ice time against the likes of Vegas, Colorado and Arizona to around six minutes in the last two games, I’d appreciate it because from where I sit, I thought Rosolvic had looked really good on the ice.

Cody McLeod hits Tobias Enstrom late. Clean-ish hit, but late. (And if we’re being fair, Toby was guilty of admiring his pass a little too long) It was the type of hit probably not needed, but happens almost in every game.

That’s the type of game Cody McLeod plays. Always has been, likely always will be.

Because it was “late” and because it did appear for a moment that it took Enstrom out of the game, Matt Hendricks drops the mitts with McLeod because for some arcane reason that’s what “the hockey code” dictates. Both McLeod and Hendricks end up with battered faces which is bad enough even ignoring what we’re starting to understand about the effects of bare knuckle fighting in hockey and it’s relation to concussions and CTE.

The fight won’t deter McLeod from his hitting and beyond the whole “answering the bell” narrative that people like to put this kind of stuff under, Hendricks hasn’t really protected any of his teammates from injury. Despite what may be suggested, Hendricks fighting doesn’t inspire Tobias Enstrom to get over his injury and get back on the ice.

I’m not anti-fighting in hockey, but I am anti-whatever this BS is.

One wonders if we’ll ever see what the Jets would have done for a tribute video for former goalie Ondrej Pavelec who I’ve noted in the past was as polarizing a goalie as I think any team could have had. Pavs would have likely started the game in Winnipeg had it not been for his injury suffered against Calgary a few days earlier.

The only thing I think that would have been more interesting that the actual tribute video would have been the crowd response to the video.

Maybe next season…