Mandatory Credit: Bruce Fedyck-USA TODAY Sports

Game Notes:

• There are many things that are more exciting than the first period of tonight’s game. Watching paint dry, grass growing, laundry, painting a fence, looking over your stamp collection. The opening 20 minutes were duller than a Nickelback concert but with slightly better musicianship. To say nothing happened would be an insult to nothing. So we won’t mention it any further.
• The middle frame was slightly better but the intensity was severely lacking. The Flyers opened the scoring on a Jordan Weal goal but the Jets answered three minutes later as Mathieu Perreault tipped home Blake Wheeler’s shot on the power play. The rest was pretty blah. I’ve seen more intensity on an episode of Fred Penner’s Place than the first 40 minutes in this snoozer.
• Things finally came to life in the third as Wheeler gave the Jets the lead for good seven minutes into the final stanza. Mark Scheifele all but sealed this one with just over six minutes left with his career high 29th of the campaign. The Flyers did score very late to add some window dressing on the scoreboard but it was a classic case of too little too late.
• You can tell that both teams were playing out the string of their respective season’s. Neither team is going to make the playoffs and it showed tonight. It’s not a great situation for either side but it’s worse for the fans who sit through this tedium. While it’s nice to win, fans want these games late in the year to mean something. Alas, it means very little in terms of postseason dreams.
• Nelson Nogier made his NHL debut tonight and the Saskatoon native was OK. His CF% wasn’t great (46.67% CF%) but he didn’t look horribly out-of-place either. Nogier replaced Ben Chiarot who missed the game due to an upper body injury.
• Michael Hutchinson made his first start since January 16 and was solid between the pipes. Hutch stopped 24 out of 26 shots for a .923 save percentage. It’s been a disappointing season for Hutchinson and there are whispers he may not return next season. This could be an important stretch for Hutchinson in case another team is watching and may take a chance on him if the Jets don’t want him back.
• Since it was a boring game, allow me one non-hockey comment. Puppies are awesome. We now go back to regularly scheduled hockey commentary.

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