For the 2nd time in the 2025 playoffs, the Winnipeg Jets are in a “win or go home” scenario at Canada Life Centre. The series shifted back to Winnipeg for tonight’s game 5 after the Stars won both game 3 and game 4 in Dallas. Game 4 was a pretty good performance from the Jets, but a combination of a Mikael Granlund hat trick and a dazzling performance from Jake Oettinger was what pushed the Stars to victory.

Down 3-1 in the series, the Jets faced a lot of questions in the game 4 post game 4 media. Scott Arniel was asked about what the message was to his team, and he said that it was “real simple… don’t lose your last game. We’re going to go home and win the next one so we come back here. We’ve got to get the job done. Focus on this next game. Work to make sure that we get ourselves back here to Dallas for a game 6.” The Jets understand what they need to do in order to win game 5, and there’s no need to worry about how they win will a game on the road if they can’t first get the job done here tonight.

The Jets have faced adversity throughout this season, but tonight will be the start of an extremely difficult task: being down 3-1 in a playoff series. If you were watching Sportsnet after game 4, you may have heard Elliotte Friedman say that of the 3 teams down 3-1 at the moment, he would rank the Jets as the most likely team to come back and win the series. I have to agree with Elliotte there, because as opposed to the series with the Blues where there were some clearly one sided games, this series has been closer than the 3-1 series lead may suggest.

Yesterday the Jets travelled back to Winnipeg, and this morning they will do a morning skate in preparation for game 5. The next big question that was asked after game 4 (besides why they can’t seem to get a playoff win on the road) was if there would be any lineup changes in game 5. Certain Jets players (particularly in the bottom 6) haven’t contributed much offence in this series, so Arniel may look for a little bit of a shake up. The late addition of adding Luke Schenn in game 4 wasn’t a bad idea, but I’d like to see the Jets go back to the 3rd pairing of Haydn Fleury and Colin Miller. The other change I’d like to see is giving Rasmus Kupari a chance in the lineup, replacing either Mason Appleton, Alex Iafallo or someone else on the 4th line.

Tonight’s expected starting goalies are no surprise: Jake Oettinger vs. Connor Hellebuyck. Oettinger has been the better goalie this series except in game 2. People online were asking for Eric Comrie to get a chance in net in round 1 when Hellebuyck was struggling, but at this point down 3-1, you have nothing to lose, Hellebuyck is the guy in goal no matter what.

There’s really not much else to discuss going into this all important game 5, and the game plan for the Jets is simple: just win. Find a way to play a complete 60 minutes, and find any way possible to get the victory in game 5. If the Jets can do what they did during the regular season, which was winning games in a wide variety of ways, they could win this one game and force a game 6 in Dallas on Saturday. Puck drop for tonight’s game is slightly after 8:30 pm CT. Make sure to check back after the game for what hopefully will not be the final post game article of the 2024-25 Winnipeg Jets season.

Connor – Scheifele – Vilardi

Ehlers – Namestnikov – Perfetti

Niederreiter – Lowry – Appleton

Tanev – Barron – Iafallo

Morrissey – DeMelo

Samberg – Pionk

Fleury – Miller

Hellebuyck

Comrie

Extras: Schenn, Kupari, Gustafsson, Anderson-Dolan, Toninato, Schenn, Stanley, Heinola

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