Jets Nation Recap: Bruins Blast Jets 6-2

Thursday night the Jets were back home at the friendly(?) confines of MTS Center and looking for their third win in a row.

Predictably they stunk-out-loud with only three recorded shots in the final 24 minutes of play and ended up losing 6-2 to the Boston Bruins.

Because of course they did.

Before that final 24 minutes of play, the Jets were leading in shots 30-11 and at the very least offensively looked good even trailing the Bruins 3-2 halfway through the game. The Bruins of course got the first goal of the game after Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand executed a well run passing drill around a pylon Mark Stuart, but the Jets got it back on a Bryan Little goal off a sweet pass from Blake Wheeler.

Loui Eriksson then ran a nice out of the corner skating drill in front of a pylon Mark Stuart and tucked the puck past Hellebuyck to give the Bruins a lead again, but again the Jets replied with a power play goal from Nik Ehlers.

The Bruins simply wouldn’t be denied a led to end the first period though as a Brad Marchand breakaway caught the defense flat footed and Hellebuyck couldn’t come up with a needed stop and the Bruins took a 3-2 lead.

In the second the Jets came out a little better on both ends and as mentioned racked up 30 shots before the halfway point of the game. Things were looking good for a shot at getting the game even, but Tuukka Rask played very well and at some point the Bruins remembered that it was ok to get into passing lanes and block shots.

Winnipeg started the 3rd erasing all doubt that tonight is when we’d see a comeback win as they gave up a 2 on 1 scoring chance 35 seconds in and David Pasrnak scored to make it 4-2.

Bergeron scored his second goal of the night seven minutes later and in a laughable move, the Jets game up an empty net goal with just slightly less than five minutes to go in the game to get to our final score.

Hellebuyck Helle-tired? Dennis Beyak lamented at the Jets being “tired” as the game got away from them in the second half but he was a bit off the mark. Connor Hellebuyck – who started the 13th of the Jets last 14 games – may have suffered a bit of fatigue having faced as many odd man rushes as he has the last stretch of games. All three goals scored on him were from about seven feet away from the net or less and while it would have been nice to get a key stop on the Eriksson or Marchand goals, we have to give credit to both players who are well known for having some good goal scoring skills.

A Pylon Mark Stuart – You may have gotten the impression that Mark Stuart didn’t have a good game. You would be correct. Normally this isn’t huge news, but the fact that it led to him seeing his ice time get drastically cut down *is* news. He had 6 shifts and 4:45 ice time in the first period. The final two periods he had 8 shifts total and 5:33 of ice time. No reports of an injury so clearly Paul Maurice had seen enough from him in the first. Is tonight enough to #FreePostma from #StuNorth? Probably not, but we’re getting closer…

The Power Play Regressed – The Jets started fine with the power play getting five shots and a handful of chances on the first attempt and actually scoring on the second… And then it got worse. Much worse. the first two power plays saw the Jets move the puck around well, rotate skaters in the offensive zone and give the Bruins fits in coverage. Then after the Ehlers goal, it was as if they figured that was enough of that and stopped everything that made those first couple of power play chances successful.

Charts courtesy of War-On-ice.com