JN Recap – Jets Salvage A Split

And now exhale…

The Jets head into the Christmas break on a little bit of a high as they beat the Vancouver Canucks and avoid a bit of a mini-disaster by splitting the two game series and even more important for the psyche of everyone involved, staying two points ahead of those Canucks in the standings.

Quick breakdown of the game by period: 1st period was garbage and there was a real fear that this somehow would be worse than Tuesday night. 2nd period was better which honestly was a very low bar to clear and saw a Lanie snipe near the end of the frame to even things up. 3rd period was maybe one of the better efforts we’ve seen from the Jets on the road.

Joel Armia and Shawn Matthias made their return tonight and both looked good. We almost forgot how strong Armia is on the PK. Matthias is a great 3rd line guy who can make the most of his minutes. Both players did face a bit as the game went along and they might be the only two players who think this break comes at a bad time.

With both 40 and 16 back in the lineup, one has to wonder if Alex Burmistrov will ever see another moment in the lineup until the next stretch of injuries happens. You could maybe say the same thing about Chris Thorburn as well. As for Drew Stafford, he was relegated to 4th line duty and at this rate, the Jets trading him for a draft pick or two may be the way to go as it’s hard to imagine he has any real trade value on the market, but can’t be justified to play over the likes of Armia, Matthias or even Lowry.

Michael Hutchinson was fantastic tonight stopping 22 of 23 shots faced. He made some key stops in the second that kept the Canucks lead to just one goal.

Nik Ehlers added two more goals tonight and I think we can officially declare his slump ‘busted’.

Let’s not get too carried away here.. It was the Canucks and if we’re being honest with ourselves, this should have been a two game sweep that the Jets slept through in the first game. The Jets didn’t exactly look any kinds of good in that first period tonight either and the first two times they had a power play they were flat out awful and didn’t have a single shot on either. Lots of work to be done, but for now we can feel a little bit better about this team.

After the roster freeze is done with, this team has some serious roster decisions to make. Hopefully Chevy is ready to do some work himself.