The Jets up and down home stand took a turn for the positive yesterday afternoon, as the Jets pulled off a 3-1 upset over the league leading Avalanche. The Jets opened the scoring, and after the Avalanche got within one late, Cole Perfetti secured the win with a nice effort on an empty net goal. This afternoon, the Jets played their 7th straight game at Canada Life Centre. With other Western Conference teams struggling lately (mostly in the Pacific), the Jets now sit six points out of a playoff spot with 17 games remaining prior to this afternoon. The 27-28-10 Jets took on the 27-29-10 Blues, a team that entered Winnipeg on a 7-2-1 stretch in their last 10 games (a 7 game point streak), good enough to be tied with the Jets and Rangers for 4th last place in the league.

There were once again no changes to the Jets line combinations against the Blues. Alex Iafallo remains on the 1st line, while Gabriel Vilardi remains on line 2. Isak Rosen has looked solid on the 3rd line with Jonathan Toews and Gustav Nyquist, while Cole Koepke, Morgan Barron and Brad Lambert remains the 4th line. Elias Salomonsson continues to look fully NHL ready on the 2nd pairing with Dylan Samberg, while the 3rd pairing is still Haydn Fleury with Jacob Bryson.

Eric Comrie got the start in goal for this second half of a back to back. The Jets lineup continues to be without four players due to injuries: Neal Pionk, Colin Miller, Nino Niederreiter and Vladislav Namestnikov. Comrie entered this afternoon’s game with a 10-9-1 record, a 3.01 GAA and a .893 SV%. This afternoon’s game started with the Jets getting an early lead, and backstopped by a strong performance by Comrie, the Jets held on for an important one goal win.

The Jets got an early lead, something they’ve been doing often in recent games. This early lead came courtesy of Hayden Fleury, who scored his 1st goal of the season. Morgan Barron entered the Blues zone and dropped it over to Brad Lambert, who found Fleury near the face off dot for a snap shot that went past Jordan Binnington.

Less than a minute after this opening goal, the Jets got their first powerplay of the afternoon, but failed to expand their lead. A few minutes after the man advantage, the Jet would double their lead. Josh Morrissey got the puck behind the net briefly and sent a pass along the boards. Mark Scheifele picked up the puck and went down the ice on a breakaway. Scheifele (on his birthday) made a nice deke to the backhand and smoothly finished off his 31st goal of the season.

With less than 3 minutes left in the period the Jets got their 2nd powerplay of the game, but couldn’t get many opportunities to further their lead. Despite what seemed like a period that was all Jets, the shots on goal after 20 minutes were actually 9-6 for the Blues.

The first half of the second frame was pretty clean from both sides. There were no penalties or costly turnovers and each team had just a few chances. Halfway into the game the shots were now 13-7 for the Blues, as Comrie looked sharp with some quality saves.

Elias Salomonsson took the Jets first penalty of the night, but the scored remained 2-0 for the Jets late into the 2nd. The Blues took their 3rd penalty of the game late in the 2nd, but once again the Jets couldn’t score on the powerplay, and the game remained 2-0 after the 2nd. Shots on goal in the 2nd were only 6-4 for the Blues.

The Blues continued to pour on the shots on goal in the 3rd period, outshooting the Jets 16-6 in the final frame. With 15 minutes left, the Blues finally got on the board. Pius Suter started a rush for the Blues before passing it to Jonatan Berggren. Daliber Dvorsky was cutting towards the net on an almost 2 on 1, and Berggren made a nice pass for Dvorsky to tap home the puck past Comrie who had no chance on this one.

The Jets didn’t let this goal discourage them, and with the whole period staying 5 on 5, the Jets would respond with an important goal six minutes later. Fleury (tonight’s 1st star) started a play by giving the puck to Morgan Barron (tonight’s 3rd star) behind the net. Barron made a great stretch pass to Kyle Connor who just got on the ice, and he went in on a breakaway and made no mistake for his 31st goal of the season.

The Blues started their push back now down two, but Comrie made some more quality saves to keep this game at 3-1. With time running out, the Blues would score with their empty net with 51 seconds left. After some nice puck movement by the Blues behind the goal, Dylan Holloway collected a rebound and snuck it past Comrie to make it 3-2.

The Jets would hang on for the win after this goal, collecting a very important two points to keep their slim playoff hopes alive. Final shots on goal were 31-16 for the Blues, as Comrie made 29 saves for tonight’s 2nd star. The Jets controlled the face off dot tonight, winning 31 of 47 draws, and they also doubled the Blues in hits, 26-13.  With both teams winning one game against each other prior to this afternoon’s matchup, the season series will conclude on April 9th in St. Louis.

After this second half of a back to back, the Jets will reset for a day, before concluding their season-long eight game homestand on Tuesday night. Their regular season schedule continues at Canada Life Centre with a game against yet another Central Division opponent, the Nashville Predators. Puck drop for this game will be just after 7:00 pm CDT. Stay tuned here at Jets Nation for all of the latest Jets news (including any rosters moves in this last quarter of the season), plus previews and recaps on each Jets game this season.