ICYMJ: Blake Wheeler’s Crazy Late Game Adventure

Friday night’s game between the New Jersey Devils and Winnipeg Jets is one of those contests that will be remembered for quite some time by both sides. The Devils absolutely blitzing the Jets in almost the entire first two periods of play with the Jets defense looking lost and the offense completely absent as they fell behind 4-0. But a late Dmitry Kulikov goal in the second period and an early Jack Roslovic goal in the third gave the Jets new life and set up one of the wildest final 25+ minutes of regular hockey we’ve seen in quite some time.

By the time the Jets tied things up a little over halfway through the third period thanks to a Neal Pionk goal, the game felt like it belonged more on a Hollywood set playing out an improbable script than it did an actual event taking place, and that’s when Jets captain Blake Wheeler started to get involved.

The first bit of crazy from the captain took place with just seconds left in the game and the jets pressing for the very late go-ahead goal when Wheeler hit the post, not once, but twice.

Are you kidding me? The replays at multiple angles told an even more heartbreaking tale.

Blake being a football fan and a die-hard Minnesota Vikings fan is probably very familiar with the ” Double Doink” missed field goal and after that probably knew exactly how the Chicago Bears felt as well. I would love to know what the odds of that type of play seeing the same result of two post hits if done a hundred times over. It has to be pretty high right?

It felt like that might have been the last best chance the jets would have had to win as typically opposing teams take advantage of such a missed oppertunity to win the game on their own, but on this night the three on three overtime settled nothing (the Devils did have one shot that beat goalie Laurent Brossoit cleanly, but rang off the crossbar) and the first three shooters for each team in the shootout couldn’t close the deal.

So when Blake Wheeler stepped up with a W on the line, he made sure that the third time was the charm

The “celly” afterwards – if you can call it that – was just as epic. A simple unsnapping of the helmet strap and a flip of the helmet.

All in a day’s work for the captain, all though this day’s work may be one of the more memorable we’ll have all season and it’s just game two of 82.