The long six game road trip ends after tonight for the Jets, but not before their toughest challenge of the six which is a date, less than 24 hours after their last game in Washington, with the red hot Nashville Predators.

Last night the Jets hung on for dear life and leaned heavily on an outstanding performance from Connor Hellebuyck against a highly motivated Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals to at least earn an OT loser point in the standings. The Jets play in overtime has been an issue the entire season and we should be thankful the NHL has not made 3 on 3 play a thing in playoff overtime. At the very least, Patrik Laine scores again last night extending his point streak to 12 games and his goal scoring streak to six. Nik Ehlers also added a goal which means that line is still clicking along and the Jets are still desperately looking for secondary scoring.

They lost.. They finally lost. Granted the loss was in overtime to the New Jersey Devils this past Saturday, so they still gained a point in the standings, but much like the classic Arnold Schwarzenegger movie of almost the same name from 30 years ago the rest of the NHL has to see that loss by the Predators and have a feeling of “if it bleeds, we can kill it.” The Preds have been getting the job done with strong defense and goaltending – over the last 12 games, they only gave up more than two goals a game twice – while having a deep, balanced offensive attack that’s been bolstered by the additions of Ryan Hartman who has two goals and two assists in seven games played with Nashville and Mike Fisher who has also found the score-sheet since joining the club four games ago.

The Preds and Jets had an absolute wild shootout of a game two weeks ago in Winnipeg where the Jets did have a 5-3 lead on Nashville in the third period, only to see the Preds storm back with three unanswered to win the game late by a 6-5 score. The first three meetings between these two teams have been filled with plenty of scoring with a cumulative score of 16 to 15 with the Predators holding an edge there as well as in the win-loss columns having gone 2-1-0 against the Jets so far. This is the fourth of five meetings with the last taking place in a little under two weeks on March 25 in Winnipeg.

It’s going to be a very tough task for a beaten up bunch of Jets to take on a Predators team that has found another level of play recently. The best we may be able to hope for is that again Michael Hutchinson and the Jets can keep it close and steal a point. That may be asking a lot itself. Predators win 5-2