An ugly first period – ugly may not even be able to accurately describe how bad it was – sunk the Jets in their lone visit to Calgary as they fell behind 5-1 after 20 minutes of play and never did recover even with a pair of Patrik Laine goals towards the comeback effort.

So here was the good… 15 seconds into the game and the Jets third line scores a really nice hustle goal with Brandon Tanev (the best Tanev) scoring his second of the season.

The rest of the period? A whole bunch of yikes.

Look, periods like this will happen to even the really good teams. The season is 82 games long and every team is going to have periods like the first period the Jets had against Vancouver on Monday night and sometimes a team will forget how to hockey and give up four goals in a row with a bunch of bad defensive plays, turnovers all over the place and just awful goaltending.

Did I say four? I meant five.

The Jets have had issues with turnovers int heir own zone pretty much all season, but this first period was all-time bad from the Jets in that department and poor Connor Hellebuyck didn’t make anything better allowing three goals on nine shots with two of those three goals against being absolute stinkers that you’d expect an ECHL goalie to give up and not a Vezina finalist.

Laurent Brossoit came in and proceeded to give up two bad ones himself.

Tyler Myers made two really bad mistakes and they both ended up in the back of the net as his horrible luck continues.

Nik Ehlers made three different rushes up the ice where he lost it at the center line.

Bad. It was all bad. It was all so bad.

It was better. Not that “better” was a very high bar to clear, but the Jets did do some really good things in the middle frame which only made the first period feel even more regrettable. They made better decisions in their own zone, the forward had a much better forecheck game going and started to force the Flames into some mistakes, they drew some penalties out of it and then Laine scored…

They got back to playing Jets Hockey™ which at least is an encouraging sign as every sign in the first period pointed to a game that would continue to get worse before it got better.

Shots in the second period favored the Jets 17-3. Scoring chances were listed at 10-3 for the Jets with 4-1 breakdown into high danger scoring chances.

The Jets were good. Flames goalie Dave Rittich was just that much better. He also seemingly has a death wish.

One, probably not wise to chase after Byfuglien. Two, if a little poke like this in a regular season game in November bothers him this much, he may as well book a padded room for all the grief he’ll get should the Flames make the playoffs.

But that’s an issue for our friends over at FlamesNation to worry about later on down the road.

Give the Flames credit, they locked things down pretty good despite the Jets best efforts and out-shooting Calgary 14-9 in the final period although unlike the second period, the Jets had a lot more trouble getting to the middle of the ice and creating any major scoring chances. NaturalStatTrick had the Flames actually leading the third period in scoring chances 7-6 with both teams having two high danger chances each.

The Jets did score to make things interesting…

And then they scored 90 seconds later to make things really interesting, or so we thought they did. Turns out the goal was ruled no goal due to goalie interference and then challenged only to have the video review room agree with the on ice call.

I don’t actually have a problem with this being ruled no goal. Yes, Rittich’s skate is outside of the crease, but Jacob Trouba skates through said crease without any effort to stay away.

The problem I have with it is two-fold.

One, we’ve seen this very type of play be ruled a goal multiple times last season against the Jets. I’ve seen it called a goal a handful of times this season in other games. Video review consistency is still an issue the league has.

Two, note the rule behind this kind of play…

If Trouba is ruled to have tripped Rittich, is it not a penalty? Tripping isn’t a subjective “well he didn’t mean to trip him, it just happened…” type call for the refs to make. If the officials felt Trouba didn’t trip Rittich, then doesn’t that mean the contact was incidental and that since the incidental contact happened outside the crease, the goal should have counted?

Whatever. I already typed out more than I should have about it. In the end it’s likely the correct call and thankfully it didn’t have any real bearing on the game even though counting it would have made it a one goal game with 13 minutes left and who knows what kind of momentum the Jets would have had and the Flames would have been reeling and…

…

Nope, stop it. I can’t think this way. This is the way it was meant to be, especially after that first period.

The Jets never really got anything close to dangerous after that and the Flames added an empty netter to seal things up.

You’ll all be happy to know that no Winnipeg professional sporting club plays in the city of Calgary again until at least this spring… It has been an ugly week in Calgary to say the least.

For Calgary  – Dave Rittich: They don’t call him Big Save Dave for nothing apparently. Without his work in the second period especially, this is a much different game.

For Winnipeg – Patrik Laine: Continuing to score a bunch (now seven goals away from 100) and his back checking work and zone exits have been much better lately.