The Jets came out flat once again Tuesday night against Montreal and it ultimately ended up biting them right in the butt. Once again The Habs beat the Jets improving their record to 7-1 since the return in 2011, and moved the Jets back below .500 on the season.

Blake Wheeler stopped dumping the puck in, so that’s good? Turns out he is not very effective at carrying it in though, so that’s bad. He’s officially been called out by Coach Noel, so maybe that will help? While we sit here waiting once again for this guy to get going, that long contract really isn’t looking so swell.

For a top line center, Bryan Little really was unable to create anything last night. That’s really saying something considering he was playing alongside Evander Kane for as long as he was. I’m not going to completely dump on him though, as he has been stuck with Blake Wheeler on his right side all year.

Evander Kane was somewhat limited against a very quick Montreal team last night. He took 3 penalties, two of which were hooking calls, and wasn’t really able to complete his patented ‘dump it in, chase it down myself, smash whoever is in my way and take a shot’ play (in fact, he was 0-3 on his dump in attempts). It didn’t help that he was playing on a line with Wheeler, who was pretty much a ghost on the night. When Evander did carry the puck over the line though, he increased his shot rate to 0.57.

Ladd and Scheifele had a pretty effective night. Although they weren’t together the whole time (Claude turned on the blender throughout the night and had some random groupings out there), they were able to generate shots off of one another’s entries. Overall I thought this was one of Scheif’s better nights, and Ladd has looked pretty good away from Little and Wheeler for the time being. I have a feeling we will see LWW back together again soon though.

Devin Setoguchi had one of his better nights as a Winnipeg Jet. His move down the lineup has either sparked him to play better, or placed him in a more advantageous situation. Whichever it is I hope he can keep it going.

As a whole, the 60% controlled entry rate is great to see, and a much better number than what’s generally been seen. The concerning part to me is that Montreal controlled 57% of their entries. As our own Kevin explained, this hints that they weren’t forechecking very intelligently, and it resulted in the defensemen having to back off at the blue line. Similarly to what we saw with the Jets on this night, Montreal had a lot of broken up chances due to bouncing pucks and poor passes. This could have been a much higher scoring game than what it was.

This was a game I found myself quite frustrated with Pavelec. As a whole, I thought he was okay. Yet I didn’t like either goal he let in, and a few times I was left scratching my head because of his positioning and over-commitments. Meanwhile, we saw what a strong positional goaltender can do for a team in Carey Price. He limited rebounds, remained calm, and simply didn’t give the Jets much to shoot at.

I’ll state this right away for both goals. They were both scored following sustained pressure from Montreal. The Jets were flat early on and got caught chasing the puck in their own zone. Yet I still put Pavelec at fault for both. This is why:

I didn’t like how long it took Pavelec to read and react to this play. To start, he was deep in his crease to begin with, not exactly coming out to challenge the point shot. Then when the puck went wide, he wasn’t able to get across the crease fast enough to cover his post, allowing Prust to bank it in off of him. Trouba likely could have done a better job at tying Prust up, but better anticipation or athleticism from Pavelec could have prevented this goal.

When I first saw this goal I was ready to just chalk it up to PK Subban having an absolute cannon of a shot. He was able to get off a clean one-timer, and blew it right passed Pavelec. When I looked at it again though, I found myself again questioning Pavelec’s movement. As the pass moves across the ice from Desharnais, Pavelec pushes himself laterally, rather than moving out and challenging a shot that he got a relatively clean look at. This left him rather deep in his crease, yet still unable to react on time, and beat glove side. For that, I’m sticking this on Pavelec again.

Well, the St. Louis Blues come to town Friday. They are a pretty darn good hockey team. They are a team that the Jets cannot afford to come out slow against. So while I go out to find Blake Wheeler, here are a few things to watch for:

What will the Jets lineup look like? As I mentioned earlier, Claude Noel really started to mix things up in this game. Normally, I would assume that he would do what he always does and go right back to the Ladd-Little-Wheeler grouping, etc. but he has to really be noticing how ineffective Wheels has been so far. I’m curious to see what he does, or if he changes things at all.

What Jets team will show up? I could put this after every game, but I have a good reason to this time. It’s been a trend since this team arrived here that just when everyone is ready to come to the realization that they aren’t good enough, they come out with an excellent performance against a far superior team. Well, the smoke’s rising once again and the Blues are a far superior team. Let’s just see what happens.

Is this penalty kill the real deal? For a second game in a row, the Jets penalty kill looked great last night. If not for an empty netter late in the game, they would have gone perfect on the night. They seem to be buying into a more aggressive approach and have been creating their own chances while down a man. If this team wants to make any sort of push for the playoffs, it was said they needed to excel on special teams and they have done just that over the last couple games.

As I posted late last night, a few friends and I have started a Winnipeg Jets focused podcast called JetStream. It’s a weekly podcast talking everything Jets and hockey related. Please, check it out by clicking here and give us a listen!