Six thoughts 10/20/11 Jets 1-4 Senators

The Jets come into Ottawa after a rough shootout loss the previous night, and make it 0-1-1 on their Ontario mini road-trip, falling to the Senators 4-1.

-Robert Cleave in his Jets Game Day post earlier today noted Craig Anderson’s struggles with making stops at even strength, but it appears the Winnipeg Jets were a victim of Anderson’s regression. Despite heavily out-shooting and out-chancing the Ottawa Senators at even strength, the Jets were out-goaltended. Again, nothing on Ondrej Pavelec, who didn’t have a chance on either of the goals, but another game goes by where the Jets face significantly better goaltending at the other end. Anderson made saves on 35 of 36 Winnipeg shots.

-The thing that stuck out at me late in the game is that, with the Jets listless powerplay on two consecutive attempts and down by two goals, Claude Noel pulled Pavelec with five minutes to go in the game, and then again at even strength with 3:11 to go. Winnipeg spent a lot of that time on the neutral zone on their heels and failed to generate any chances, but I credit Noel with putting it on his forwards to create a little more offense.

-On those powerplays, Dustin Byfuglien was split up from the Nik Antropov and Alexander Burmistrov powerplay combination, which is something I didn’t quite understand. Perhaps Noel was attempting to get the dreaded scorer Tim Stapleton going. The Jets didn’t get their best players on the ice late in the game on the powerplay, which potentially led to why Noel thought he needed an extra guy out there.

-I’m an admitted Burmistrov addict, and he made another fabulous play to get the puck to Dustin Byfuglien for his first goal on the season. Byfuglien had 9 shot attempts and 6 made it on net, if one cares about stat-lines. He came off a 29:26 game the night before in Toronto and in Ottawa tonight played 26:57. The man hogs minutes and plays well at both ends. The more he plays, the more I begin to think his contract is worth it. He makes players better on the ice.

-Antropov provided the screen on that goal, and his size has been a pretty good asset. Craig Anderson had no idea where the puck came. The other member of that unit, Kyle Wellwood, put up pretty good possession numbers in San Jose last season and may be a factor into that line’s early season success. Antropov and Wellwood were both +8 against Ottawa and Burmistrov a +7 in Corsi.

-Right now I have to say that the most worrying aspect of the team is the team’s lack of scoring depth. The top line has yet to really get it going, but that could change against Carolina, whose defense corps is made up of three sieves and three strainers. That line is very quick and gets up the ice quick, but they have yet to really take a game over and create a lot of scoring chances.