It’s unreasonable to expect that the @Winnipeg Jets are going to close out this season a perfect 15-0 as they attempt a late season playoff push. A loss here and there is going to happen and that’s fine because it’s not like any of the other teams the Jets are in this race with are going to win out either. But games like the one they had on Monday night against the @Arizona Coyotes are most critical for the Jets not only to find a way to win, but win in regulation so that extra points aren’t given away.

Thankfully the Jets found a way to do just that against Arizona even though it didn’t look good early on.

You might not care for fighting in hockey. I am not a huge fan of it myself… But can we all admit it was fun to watch @Adam Lowry get back on the ice, lay a big hit behind the Jets net and then tune in @Lawson Crouse who for some reason thought he needed to avenge his struck down teammate?

Also, how does Crouse not get an extra two for instigating? NHL officiating remains a mystery.

You know how sometimes you watch a movie or a TV show and that first viewing you didn’t really care for it or think it was overly good, but then for some reason you go watch it again because something inside your head wonders if you missed something, and so you do and you realize that it wasn’t that bad, and heck you might even like it after the second viewing?

That was me and the first period of last night’s game. I had to re-watch it because my knee jerk reaction after it happened, was that it was a really bad period for the Jets, but then I realized that may have been a biased opinion from having seen them give up a second goal in the period with just 1.2 seconds left to put the Jets down 0-2 in what was a critical game against a team also in a Wild Card race with them.

So late Monday night I watched it again because the Jets did out-shoot the Coyotes 11-7 and logic would suggest that the Jets had to have done a few good things in that first frame. Turns out it wasn’t as bad as I thought, although it still wasn’t good and was a lot like the first period the Vegas Golden Knights had against the Jets last Friday. The Coyotes took advantage of a couple of defensive mistakes made by the Jets on the two goals scored, and the Jets did get more of the shots, but they didn’t drive to the net and create traffic in front of @Darcy Kuemper as much as they maybe should have.

Actually that was a theme the entire game really. The Jets did start to attack the high danger area in the second and third periods but defensively they allowed the Coyotes to do the same. Again, the biggest difference in the game was @Connor Hellebuyck who after the first period kept the Coyotes at bay – especially after the @Nikolaj Ehlers goal early in the second period when Arizona responded well and had two of three good scoring chances to try and restore their two goal lead.

The work of Cody Eakin since he joined the Jets two weeks ago may single handedly re-spark the whole “advanced stats” vs “eye test” wars of the mid-00’s.

His puck possession metrics – the Corsi and Fenwick measurements – have consistently been negative almost his entire career, despite the fact over the last few seasons in Vegas he’s been sheltered to a degree with a higher percentage of zone starts in the offensive end of the ice than on the defensive.

And yet as I watch him with Patrik Laine and Nikolaj Ehlers I keep thinking: He’s really not that bad a player. Heck, he kind of works with this line right now. It’s not perfect by any stretch, especially in their own end of the ice, but offensively they are doing fine enough. Eakin can hold his own in the faceoff dot, he forechecks pretty well and as I’ve said repeatedly now all Eakin has to do out there is play smart, simple hockey, not overthink things or try to do to much. Basically let Laine and Ehlers do most of the heavy lifting and work off that.

The game winning goal was a result of two things Eakin brings to the Jets that others below him on the depth chart don’t have together: decent face off skill and more importantly the experience to know that he can wait out a flailing @Darcy Kuemper for a couple of seconds before firing the game winning goal into an empty net.

Don’t get me wrong, I will be perfectly fine if the Jets this summer don’t re-sign Eakin to a multi-year deal that will likely pay him north of 3.5 million a season. Cody isn’t the answer to the Jets long standing second line center issue, and there should be major heat brought up if we start the 2020-21 season with Eakin centering Ehlers and Laine.

For now though, and I am sure most of you disagree, but I feel this line is working out ok and Cody Eakin has been an overall net positive addition to the team even if his underlying stats have not been positive.