Jets Nation Recap: Winnipeg Jets hit 90 points after bombing the Habs

The Winnipeg Jets are back to placing tallies in the win column after a momentary hiccup in Vancouver.

Despite what the scoreboard says, the Jets actually struggled early. They allowed quite a few glorious chances for the Montreal Canadiens early. Thankfully Ondrej Pavelec kept the Jets in the game with a tonne of saves in the first.

Dustin Byfuglien opened the scoring in the first off a nice drop-pass from Jim Slater. Mark Scheifele brought it up to two in the second, only for Andrei Markov to reply 41 seconds later. The second period ended after two more goals scored by Jim Slater and Blake Wheeler.

Things looked good for the Jets, who by the third period were back to their normal selves in defensive and transitional play while holding a 4-1 lead.

There was a moment of fear with Brendan Gallagher scoring off of a bad giveaway in front of Pavelec from Drew Stafford, but an opportunistic goal from Adam Lowry gave the Jets back their 3 point lead.

Let’s break it down.

BAD start – The Jets were caught sleeping early despite the goal from Dustin Byfuglien. After the first, the shots on goal were 20-5 in favour of the Habs. This is not a way to win games, even if you have Carey Price in net, which neither team did.

Pavelec (again!?!) – Pavelec continues the hot streak and stood on his head yet again. Pavelec had a one in 87 chance of matching or beating his 0.964 save percentage over his last hot five game stretch. Two games later and Pavelec is sitting just under at 0.960. He’s got three games to boost that by 0.004 to beat the odds.

Team Play – Despite a terrible start, the Jets actually had a pretty good game in the shot metrics outside of the first. Three out of four lines finished the game with a positive Corsi differential, which is a recipe for success in the long run. Things can only look up with the immediate expected return of Ben Chiarot, Bryan Little, and Mathieu Perreault.

Individual scoring chances (iSC), shot attempt differential (Corsi +/-), non-blocked shot attempt differential (Fen +/-), and offensive zone face off as percentage of all non-neutral zone face-offs:

Shot attempt chart for all minutes:

(Courtesy: hockeystats.ca)

Shot location chart:

(Courtesy: war-on-ice)

Jets were outshot 31-13 but leading 4-1 at one point. Trololol