As far as pre-season games go, that was sure one of them.

There wasn’t much to write home about in tonight’s contest between the Winnipeg Jets and Minnesota Wild other than to say it was a decent tune up for both teams that the Wild ended up taking with a 4-3 win thanks to a third period comeback.

Positives for the Jets on the night would include a long awaited first goal for Kristian Vesalainen as he continued to make his push for an opening night roster spot as well as Dustin Byfuglien who looks ready for the season to go. As is the case most times the Jets are on the road int he pre-season, overall the Jets dressed more of a depth / AHL lineup and played against more regular NHLers on the other side and for two periods looked ok doing so.

Laurent Brossoit looked good at times for the Jets, but a shaky third period and a final save percentage of .857 still leaves a lot of doubt in terms of him being a capable NHL backup goalie.

 

As has seemingly been the case with every Jets game in this pre-season, it was the opposition that came out a little better and had the Jets on their heels for the start of the game. The pressure created by the Wild results in a pretty strange goal created by a strip of Dustin Byfuglien and a failed attempt by Andrew Copp inside the Jets crease to bat a puck out of the air which in turn may have gone into the net off of him. The Jets rebounded in the second half of the period with a better effort even though they ended up out-shot 12-7. The Jets picked up play is led by the Tanev/Lowry/Copp line that did some nice work down low and fed Nelson Nogier in the slot who tied things up.

Winnipeg’s play remains strong after the intermission and they get the lead thanks to Kristian Vesalainen who got a Byfuglien rebound and spun around with a backhanded power play goal. Jets have a 13-10 edge in shots for the period as both teams open things up a little. The Wild do tie things on a Greg Pateryn goal but late in the period, Byfuglien – who after his slight gaffe in the first period on the Staal goal had a good all-around game – helps the Jets re-take the lead with seconds left in the period.

The Wild take advantage of some poor defensive play resulting in two goals to seal up the win. Jason Zucker ties things up on the power play – mere seconds after Brandon Tanev and Adam Lowry missed on a two on one scoring chance at the other end – by blowing by a slow footed Ben Chiarot and catching Dmitry Kulikov out of position. The game winning goal from Jared Spurgeon results in pretty much all five Jets players on the ice were caught either flat footed and tired or not reading the play properly and blowing defensive assignments.

For Winnipeg: Dustin Byfuglien – Tough luck on the first goal against as he may have gotten too cute with the puck, but was steady the rest of the night. A goal and assist for the big man.

For Minnesota: Eric Staal – Also had a goal and an assist in the game and was a pain on the defensive side of things as well as he forced multiple jets offensive turnovers.

Ready for pre-season hockey to be over? We sure are! Only one game left in it and it’s back in Winnipeg Thursday night as the New Jersey Devils pay a visit to Bell MTS Place. Puck drop is 7 PM CST.