On Friday night the Winnipeg Jets hung with arguably the best five-on-five team in hockey for 60 minutes. It wasn’t enough, as the club dropped their sixth consecutive decision in overtime to the Chicago Blackhawks.

Read past the jump for more.

Discipline – The Jets have given up a tonne of power-play goals against during their current losing streak, so if there’s a silver lining to take away from Friday night’s overtime loss – aside from the Bettman point, of course – it’s that Winnipeg wasn’t scored on when they were short-handed. 

As importantly, the Jets only gave the Blackhawks two power-play opportunities. Usually that wouldn’t be deserving of praise, but considering that Jets have averaged nearly seven penalties per contest since the All-Star break, it’s worth noting. 

Hutchinson returns to form  – Another major positive for the Jets, despite the loss, was the play of Michael Hutchinson. 

The rookie netminder has been stellar for the Jets this season, and has provided the club with the sort of goaltending they’ve simply never received with any level of consistency since relocating from Atlanta. Lately though, he’s struggled enormously. In fact his save percentage in three appearances since the All-Star game was below .860 percent heading into Friday night’s game.

Obviously the Jets and their fans would prefer two points, but at least Hutchinson was good enough to give his club a chance on Friday night. Hutchinson stopped 19 of 21 shots faced, and the goal that beat him weren’t soft.

Goaltending has been killing the Jets of late, but it wasn’t why they lost on Friday.

Top-end mismatch – For much of the year the Jets’ top-line of Andrew Ladd, Bryan Little and Blake Wheeler have carried them. On Friday night though, Winnipeg’s top-line lost their matchup decisive when matched against good Manitoba boy Jonathan Toews.

This isn’t a huge knock on the play of Little, Ladd and Wheeler. Lots of great players lose the territorial battle to Toews and company with regularity. 

Plus, it’s not like it was a particularly fair fight. After all, where Toews and his line-mates had their usual coterie of top-end defenders to help them control play, Little, Ladd and Wheeler’s best defenseman was playing on a different forward line (save for the power-play).

Jets Individual 5v5 individual statistics:

Individual scoring chances (iSC), shot attempt differential (Corsi +/-), non-blocked shot attempt differential (Fen +/-), and offensive zone faceoff as percentage of all non-neutral zone faceoffs:

Shot attempt chart for all minutes:

(Courtesy: Hockeystats.ca)

Shot attempt chart:

(Courtesy: war-on-ice.com)

Let’s get real. The Jets played really well on Friday. That they lost anyway? That’s a heartbreaker (you’ve got the best of me, but I just keep on coming back incessantly!).

We should have known right from the start you were going to break my heart!