Going on the road and getting W’s hasn’t seemed to be an issue as of late for the Winnipeg Jets as they won three of four in a very hostile Nashville arena leading to a series win over the Predators. Now the Jets will have to take at least one of the next two in Las Vegas which may not have the volume or sing-song chanting that Nashville features, but you can sure bet the pre-game show will be all sorts of fantastic.

Many stated that this was finally a case of game seven fatigue setting in for the Jets who were still in ‘game seven mode’ for game one of this series and couldn’t possibly keep up that level of play on through the next game after. They were off with their passing, they didn’t skate as well as we’ve seen them do in previous playoff games and there may have been a bit of a case where Marc-Andre Fluery’s strong play in net was getting in their heads where the Jets felt they needed to make the perfect play to get the exact right shot on MAF. Hopefully Kyle Connor’s wing and a prayer goal mid-way through the third period served as a bit of a reminder to the Jets that pucks on net is never that bad a play.

Basically played the same way in game two that they did in the latter half of game one. The skated better and used their speed to force the Jets into mistakes that they then took advantage of. Basically a four minute stretch of hockey in the first period where the Jets fell apart a bit and Vegas pounced. From there they took a page from the Predators book of playing with a lead against the Jets and didn’t give Winnipeg any room to skate – again, not that Winnipeg was helping matters much themselves by their inability to skate.

Get a lead, lock things down. It’s starting to become a pattern in these playoffs but it’s the truth. You can’t fall into the trap of fire-wagon type hockey with the Jets because there may be one or two teams in the league that could hope to match them and both of them are playing in the East Conference Final. Vegas had it right in game two: Get the lead off of Jets mistakes and then play the rest of the game as evenly as possible and wait for more mistakes as they happen.

So now that they’ve got the crummy, lazy, non-skating, too-much-passing game out of the way, they can get back to playing more Jets-like hockey. They don’t even need to worry about getting that all important first goal as long as they skate better and stop over-thinking their attack on Fleury. Also, a goal from either Nik Ehlers or Adam Lowry wouldn’t hurt at this point. They are so overdue, it isn’t funny.

SinBin.Vegas points out that Vegas earned their game two victory largely based on the fact that they didn’t give the Jets what they wanted…

You want to talk about stats and trends in these playoffs? How about the fact that the Jets have yet to lose back to back games in the playoffs? Works for me! Jets win 4-2.