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JNR: Hellebuyck And The Jets Cook The Ducks 3-0

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Photo credit:© Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports
Art Middleton
4 years ago
Feast on turkey on Thursday, dine on duck the next day.
The Winnipeg Jets win their third in a row and again do so by being out-shot, but making the most of the scoring chances they do earn with goals early in the second and third periods while @Connor Hellebuyck stopped all 24 shots he faced for his second shutout of the season as the Jets got a little bit of revenge for that loss in Anaheim a month earlier by beating the Ducks today, 3-0.

First Period

A rather quiet opening 20 minutes outside of the chippy and physical play that the Ducks always seem to bring to their game that the Jets were more than happy to dish back out to them.
The shots in the first period ended up 5-4 for the Ducks, mostly due to decent defensive play on both ends, but also some passed up chances such as the one Patrik Laine gave up near the end of the period.

Second Period

The Ducks took a charging penalty right at the end of the first period and the Jets power play made them pay about a minute into the second as Neal Pionk scored his third of the season.
Eight minutes after that, the Jets score yet again off a nice breakout and pretty passing that results in a @Nikolaj Ehlers goal.
Make no mistake though, the period is carried mostly by the Ducks who again have the majority of shots in the period and also have an 8-3 advantage in second period high danger scoring chances. The heat map after two looks especially ugly if you’re a Jets fan who hates seeing a lot of traffic in front of Hellebuyck.
But Hellebuyck does stand tall making a handful of tough looking saves and is just as much the reason the Jets are up 2-0 after 40 than the actual goals scored.

Third Period

The Jets don’t start the third with a power play, but they get another early period goal off of a nice zone entry and eventual feed from Mark Scheifele to Kyle Connor.
The Ducks do themselves in really by taking multiple penalties – three of them to be exact – in the final frame which kills any chance they might have had to get back into the game. The Jets didn’t do a whole lot with the man advantages, one of them actually saw zero shots from Winnipeg for the entire two minutes, but it hardly matters as the Jets are content to keep things simple and not take any crazy chances in pushing for a fourth goal.
But the six minutes of power play time does help give the Jets a 9-7 edge in shots and a 4-1 lead in even strength high danger scoring chances.
Winnipeg for a second game in a row close out a win rather comfortably… I think this is something we can all get used to going forward. Hellebuyck earns his 16th career shutout, the second of his career against the Ducks.

JetsNation’s Top Gun

The second period saw the Ducks play pretty well and it’s where Hellebuyck earned his keep on the day with 13 saves made in the middle period. As always, it seems like Jets fans could name him the player of the game for every game and they wouldn’t be wrong.
Neal Pionk had a super active game as well though. He’s been shooting the puck a little harder the last couple of games (a man takes part in one hardest shot contest and suddenly he starts unleashing bombs during the games) and in his own end he continues to be a very pleasant surprise in contrast to what a lot of us expected to see when the Jets got him back in the @Jacob Trouba deal.

The Boxscore

Next Flight

The beauty part of having two teams in the Los Angeles area is very little travel as the Jets will get to hang around the city for a little while longer and take on the Kings on Saturday night. Puck drop is 8 PM CST and the game will be on Sportsnet and TSN 1290.

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