Jets Nation Recap: Jets Quack Under Pressure

A second loss in So-Cal in as many nights, this time to the Anaheim (we’re not Mighty) Ducks by a 3-1 score.

But fear not, for this isn’t a recap to tell you what all went wrong for your beloved Jets like last night’s recap was! Instead, let us focus on the positives because believe it or not there were a few.

Ok, one negative.. This wasn’t an entertaining game by any stretch and from here on out given all the injuries and the fact the Jets are out of it, they probably won’t be at all. That said, it was a competitive game and that’s all any jets fan can ask for right now. Minor blow-outs like the Jets had to endure against the Kings are a train wreck to have to suffer through. Games like tonight at least keep things close.

Now the positives:

Michael Hutchinson was fantastic in a loss. 32 save performance and a .941 save percentage and he looked a little bit like the Hutch of last year where he was good positionally, not scrambling like crazy and able to look through traffic fairly well. It was nice to see and based on his last few appearances including tonight, here is hoping Paul Maurice gives him a few more looks to build on that momentum.

The Ducks goals came from a shot at the blue line that beat a partly screened Hutch, a fluke deflection off of Trouba after Andrew Coglianio flipped it to the front of the net from behind the Jets net, and an empty net goal.

The Jets defense all things considered wasn’t too bad against a very good group of Ducks forwards. They were certainly better tonight than they were against the Kings the night prior. I say “all things considered” because for all intense purposes, this is a defense featuring Jacob Trouba, a rookie and then four other guys who should be with the Manitoba Moose. They did well enough with the kingpin Dustin Byfuglien out of the lineup – Trouba and Melchiori acting as the top pair.

Not to mislead you, the Ducks still dominated the Jets and zone exits were still an issue, but maybe because expectations of this group of defensemen are so low it didn’t feel as awful as other games have.

Nelson Nogier is holding his own in the bigs even as he’s paired with Mark Stuart. Melchiori is obviously benefitting from playing beside Trouba and Brian Strait is doing just enough to not be a complete screw-up beside Josh Morrissey.

Speaking of JoMo, he got the lone Jets goal after deflecting a Blake Wheeler shot from the blueline. A little odd to see a defenseman tipping a forward shot from the point, but then this entire season has been odd, so why the heck not?

Most of the forwards did struggle tonight, but again give credit to the Ducks for being very strong in the neutral zone and in their own end when the Jets did manage to get the puck there the handful of times that they did.

We’re in that weird stretch of final games where wins would be nice, but losses help the Jets chances in the draft lottery and so we don’t really have much reason to root for one option over the other, but at the very least we can all hope for somewhat competitive games and that’s what we got here tonight.

TL;DR GIF RECAP