JNGD.66 Recap: The Patrik Laine Show
6 years ago
A fantastic road effort for the Winnipeg Jets in New York tonight as they picked up a shutout thanks to a returning Steve Mason in goal and some solid defense around him.
Oh and Patrik Laine is amazing and the entire offense tonight which is also amazing.
TALKING POINTS
- We’re starting to run out of superlatives to describe just how magnificent Patrik Laine has been. He now has 10 goals and 12 points in his last six games. I joked on Twitter earlier how ever other shot seems to be going in for him, but in the last six games he’s registered 19 shots on goal which means he’s shooting at a 52.6% rate. So it practically is him scoring on every other shot. Incredible run for him.
- It’s also incredible that a 31 save shutout is going to be kinda overlooked, but that’s where we are with Steve Mason who got his first clean sheet as a Winnipeg Jet. I thought he looked pretty good – perhaps a bit lucky at moments – but he didn’t seem tentative in goal which is a great sign for someone coming back from a concussion. Mason’s strong return can’t come at a better time as Connor Hellebuyck has been great, but needs some relief in this stretch run towards the playoffs.
- The third big storyline in the game is the health of Mark Scheifele after he left midway through the second period with what the team called an “upper body injury” … TV cameras caught him mouthing the words (or at least what looked to be the words) “It’s my collarbone” to one of the trainers on the bench and after the game Paul Maurice expressed that he hoped it wasn’t overly serious. We likely won’t know any more until Thursday as the team has a day off tomorrow.
- Something also not to be overlooked is the Jets getting back to more disciplined ways and only giving up the one power play to New York which they killed. In the first two games of this road trip, the Jets have been skating well and that cuts down on the stick infractions they are prone to take at times. They’ll need to keep that up into the playoffs.
SCORING SUMMARY
LAINE (and Mase) HIGHLIGHTS
HOW DID THEY CORSI?
Matchups are limited to 5-on-5 situations. Tile size is scaled by Time On Ice and colour is scaled by adjusted Expected Goals differential. Blue represents a home team advantage and red represents a road team advantage.
PLAYERS OF THE GAME
For Winnipeg: Patrik Laine – Who else? Ok maybe Steve Mason, but Laine is a human cheat code with his shooting right now. Goalies are getting clean looks at his shots and not stopping them.
For NY Rangers: Henrik Lundqvist – This could have been another case of King Henrik stealing a win from Winnipeg tonight if not for the exploits of Laine. Without Lundqvist though I think one could argue that this game would have been a blowout for the Jets.
NEXT FLIGHT
The Jets get to deal with a red hot Taylor Hall as they will dance with the New Jersey Devils on Thursday night as the road trip continues. The puck drops in Newark at 6 PM CST.
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