JetsNation Recap – Jets Laine-Dance Their Way To An OT Win

GAME THOUGHTS

• We are so, so lucky to have Patrik Laine on this team and we’ve really just gotten started with him. He still needs to fill out his 18 year old frame, he still needs to be a bit better playing without the puck (not that he’s bad, but he does seem a little bit lost without the puck at times) but man when he has that puck, he can do a ton of damage. He danced around Alex Pietrangelo – who by the way is a pretty good defenseman – in the first period, he looked dangerous on the power-play, his goal in the second period where he got into open space, took a pass and dangled in for the score was nifty, AND that backhand pass to Little for the OT winner? It’s almost unfair…  And he’s only 18 years old.

• I thought the third and fourth lines were fairly exceptional tonight. Tanev on the 4th line and Dano on the 3rd especially and that may be the problem. I watched that 4th line with Tanev buzzing all over the place and Thorburn and Burmistrov getting chances from it and wondering if it was just because if Tanev’s work tonight. Tanev and Dano will have off-nights themselves and that’s when it seems to be when the bottom six struggle, but for tonight I thought they played well and guys like Thorburn and Copp complemented their play.

• Speaking of Thorburn, he will never score and easier goal than that short-handed effort but let’s give him some credit for reading the play and being able to hustle to catch up and get past Wheeler and head directly to the net with the stick on the ice. Thor had 17 shifts in total and a little over 11 minutes of ice time which was a reflection of what kind of strong play he had tonight.

• HNIC said Scheifele was missing the game due to “flu” issues.. The Jets listed him as out with “lower body” issues… If you didn’t giggle at least a little bit when putting the two of those together, you clearly hate fun. (And haven’t had ‘lower body’ flu related issues yourself I guess)

• Hutchinson may have just played his way back into a few more starts with his performance tonight, especially late in the third period with some key stops while the Blues had a power play. Yes his .909 save percentage isn’t ideal and I’m sure he would have liked that goal he allowed to Alex Steen back, but no complaints from him tonight.

• I don’t recall seeing Drew Stafford on the ice at all really. The score-sheet tells me he was on the ice a bunch of times and he had 2 shots on goal, but I barely noticed. Of all the “trade bait” the Jets potentially have, I still feel like Drew is on top of that list.

• Games against the Blues had been relatively chippy in the past, but tonight not as much which is a bit of a relief considering the Jets have another big contest in about 24 hours in Chicago.

CHARTS N STUFF

YOUR HOT TAEKS

TL;DR GIF RECAP