It was a game that had a little bit of everything. There were plenty of goals, big hits, a few scrums, and a disallowed goal 13 seconds in. After the wacky start, the Jets settled in and played an excellent game as they dismantled the Stars defense en route to five goals. It was an all around great effort from the team as they picked up an important Central Division victory.

After such a great team effort, let’s take a step back and examine what we can learn from last night’s game.

It was a unique pregame ceremony as the team brought out Andrew Harris, Chris Streveler, and Nick Demski along with the recently acquired Grey Cup to centre ice for a ceremonial puck drop. It was a phenomenal atmosphere with the entire building on their feet acknowledging the great accomplishment of winning the Grey Cup for the first time in 29 years.

With such a great atmosphere, the Jets came out flying and Patrik Laine lit the lamp only 13 seconds into the game. You couldn’t have asked for a better start…

Until the goal was disallowed because of a missed offside call. The puck barely came out of the zone, but it was enough to conclusively say that Scheifele was off-side before passing the puck to Laine in front of the net.

It was a deflating end to such a fantastic pregame ceremony for the team. Luckily the Jets kept up the pace which leads to the following point.

It’s been a mixed bag this year with Connor Hellebuyck needing to bail out his team on more than one occasion. That wasn’t the case last night as the Jets played well from start to finish. They had a number of great chances in the opening few shifts and got on the board first with Ehlers notching his team leading 13th goal of the year.

There have been times this season where the Jets have been extremely passive on offense. That wasn’t the case last night as all of their goals came from the most dangerous areas right in front of the crease.

Even though the Jets were helped by a few lucky bounces, they were getting to the dangerous areas all game long and had a number of other chances right in front of the crease.

The shot chart is slightly misleading in terms of Winnipeg’s defense because most of Dallas’ chances came in the third period after the game was already out of hand. In fact, the Jets actually gave up their fewest number of shots in the first period as they held the Stars to only three shots on Hellebuyck.

Was there ever any doubt that Laine would score in this game?

Laine’s career success against the Stars has been well-documented over the past few weeks and he continued to deliver in this one. After getting his first goal disallowed on the first shift of the game, he came back with a vengeance in the second period as he scored a nice goal off a partial breakaway.

The goal came minutes after Laine took an undisciplined penalty to negate a Jets powerplay. He came back on the ice ready to make a difference and he scored moments later to restore the three goal lead.

With this being the third meeting in less than a month, these two teams are starting to get quite the rivalry. Things boiled over later in the game as Ehlers and Benn slashed each other after a whistle. Even though Benn’s much larger, Ehlers didn’t back down as they tussled towards the corner. More guys jumped into the scrum and all of a sudden Adam Lowry was throwing punches right into the face of Corey Perry.

A perennial favourite to “boo” in Winnipeg, the fans loved seeing Lowry get into it with Perry.

With these teams meeting again on Thursday, look for some more rough stuff as these teams battle for points in the Central Division.