Game 13 @ Colorado: Montoya and Entries

10 years ago

A few bad breaks and a very slow start were the key components leading to a Jets loss in the second game of a back-to-back. In other news, the sky is blue and Winnipeg winters are cold.

Zone Entries

5 vs 5	Player	# of successful entries	Shots (From Entries)	Shots/Entry	Controlled Entries	Shots (Controlled Entries)	% With Control	% That Fail
2	Pardy	3	3	1.00	2	2	67%	0.0%
5	Stuart	2	1	0.50	0	0	0%	N/A
9	Kane	4	1	0.25	4	1	100%	0.0%
12	Jokinen	4	1	0.25	0	0	0%	100.0%
15	Halischuk	5	2	0.40	2	1	40%	0.0%
16	Ladd	4	2	0.50	1	0	25%	50.0%
17	Wright	1	0	0.00	0	0	0%	N/A
18	Little	6	2	0.33	5	2	83%	16.7%
22	Thorburn	1	0	0.00	0	0	0%	N/A
24	Clitsome	1	0	0.00	0	0	0%	N/A
26	Wheeler	5	4	0.80	3	4	60%	25.0%
27	Tangradi	8	4	0.50	2	1	25%	33.3%
33	Byfuglien	1	2	2.00	1	2	100%	0.0%
39	Enstrom	3	0	0.00	0	0	0%	N/A
40	Setoguchi	6	5	0.83	4	5	67%	0.0%
44	Bogosian	1	1	1.00	0	0	0%	N/A
55	Scheifele	4	1	0.25	3	1	75%	25.0%
67	Frolik	4	2	0.50	3	2	75%	0.0%
	TEAM	63	31	0.49	30	21	48%	16.7%
	OPP	65	41	0.63	37	28	57%	24.5%
	OZF	9	2	0.22
	DZF	13	4	0.31

Observations

There’s been a lot of talk about Mark Scheifele and his play of late. As I said in my article the other day, it is time to be a little concerned about the kids usage and his immediate play. He did manage to increase his entries in this game, despite an overall lack of production once he got in there. He’ll be a guy to keep an eye on moving forward.
Following some scary news about Paul Postma on Sunday, Adam Pardy stepped in and had another pretty solid game. The weird thing is, I honestly think Claude could see this performance in a negative light. Judging by the entry data from the other defenseman throughout the majority of this season, he could be actually instructing his defenseman to dump the puck in, rather than carry it. Why? Possibly to prevent the chance of someone getting caught out of position. Is it a good plan? I don’t think so.
Evander Kane managed to control all of his entries against the Avs, but for the second night in a row we didn’t see his usual production. Keep in mind he clearly is fighting some sort of illness, so nothing to really worry about here.
Devin Setoguchi has been quite productive lately. Not only was he able to enter the zone quite effectively Sunday night, but he was also taking it into some rather dangerous spots. My complaint? He needs to shoot the puck. Too often I though he was trying to create a highlight-reel goal rather than shooting when he had the chance.
A telling stat is the near 60% controlled entry rate that the Avs managed against the Jets. This indicates that Colorado was able to really control the neutral zone when they had the puck, and were mostly able to enter the Jets zone with speed and little resistance. Not a great combination for success if you’re the Jets.

Montoya Performance

Once again, I thought Al Montoya had an excellent performance in net. The Jets came out ridiculously flat, and he (similar to Pav early in the season) was the reason they stayed in the game. He remained solid throughout the night, and was beaten on goals that I have trouble blaming him for.

Goal	Situation	Reason It Went In	Where It Went
1	2 on 1	Rebound	Open Net
2	Sustained Pressure	Beat Clean	Glove Hand
3	Turnover/Sustained Pressure	No Chance	Right Pad

Quick Explanations

We saw Bryan Little and Andrew Ladd work this exact 2 on 1 play against Washington last week. Downie takes a perfectly placed shot low at Montoya’s far pad, forcing him to kick a rebound out to a waiting Matt Duchene. After being robbed on two previous occasions before this one, Duchene was sure to blast this puck into the net.

An unfortunate bounce off of Dustin Byfuglien’s stick led to Montoya’s demise on this goal. The puck peacefully slid right to Hejda’s stick, who absolutely destroyed the puck bar down past Montoya. Monty was cheating blocker side a bit due to the traffic in front, but that’s a tough, perfectly placed shot to stop from that distance. Tanguay also screened the shooter’s blade, and boxed Byfuglien out. Montoya was set and ready, but couldn’t know where it was going.

Someone want to take Stastny in front? The ridiculous part of this goal is that Montoya almost had it. You can see him check a few times to see that Paul is in front of the net, then he drops a little early and tucks into the post in order to prepare himself for the pending slide across. Ultimately it wasn’t enough, and Colorado took the lead.

Things to Watch For

The Jets finish off their road trip tonight in St. Louis, against a team that is all but a lock for a playoff spot. Here are a few things to watch for following last night’s game against the Avalanche:

Will Evander be healthy? It was a rough weekend for the sick & injured Evander Kane. If the Jets want to compete against a very tough Blues team, they need him to be at his best.
How will the young guy play? Kind of a constant question this season, but it will be interesting to see how Mark Scheifele will play. It’s probably a good thing he hasn’t been in the city this week due to all the criticisms, so hopefully he can shut people up before he comes back. Either that or talk with Evander about how to shut it all out.
Can the power play do…anything? When your penalty kill is the more dangerous of the two on a regular basis, you know you have a problem. Surprisingly, the Blues PK hasn’t exactly been locking teams down (currently at 78.4%), so there’s at least a glimmer of hope.

Final Thought

Paul Postma is going to be out of the Jets lineup for months with a blood clot in his leg. Ignoring what this does to the Jets, you have to hope for the best for Paul. That’s a very scary situation that luckily they found before it caused any serious damage. Best wishes to Postma from all of us here at Jets Nation.