After getting off to one of the hottest starts in NHL history, the Winnipeg Jets are crashing back to earth.
Returning home from a six-game road trip, Winnipeg looked lifeless in a 4-1 loss to the St. Louis Blues Tuesday night, their fourth loss in a row and seventh in their last ten games.
The Jets had only 23 shots on goal, including just three in the middle frame where the Blues struck twice at four-on-four to take the lead for good.
“In the second, we just got away from our game a little bit,” said forward Mark Scheifele who scored their lone goal in the final five minutes. “And them getting two four-on-four goals was tough. They clogged it up, they played good ‘D’ and made it tough for us to get to the net. Yeah, we just didn’t play our game.”
Jordan Kyrou scored twice for the Blues in the win.
It was just the Jets second loss on home ice this season and it was the first time the Blues have won in Winnipeg in more than three full years. The Jets were outshot 19-3 in the second period.
“The second period – we got cute,” said Jets head coach Scott Arniel. “We missed assignments on the four-on-four twice, but the second period, it was just we were trying to play cute hockey. We were trying to make highlight reel plays.
“We’ll just continue to get guys to realize that there’s certain ways that we need to do things to have success. We’ll talk about it but we can’t dwell on it, but at the end of the day we need to be better as a group.”
Winnipeg won just 38 per cent of the faceoffs, while their power play was 0-for-2 with the extra attacker.
The Jets have only scored 11 times in their last six games and Kyle Connor is in the midst of a six-game goal scoring slump. After leading the NHL in goals not that long ago, the offence has suddenly all dried up for the Jets.
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“We have opportunities to attack the net and we look for one more play,” Arniel said. “The attack mindset is kinda been something that we’ve had for most of the year and right now we’re kinda deferring. We’re trying to maybe make one more play, our ‘D’ aren’t getting pucks down from the top to the net front. But also we don’t have that second chance.”
The Jets made two lineup changes after placing Nikolaj Ehlers on injured reserve earlier in the day with a lower-body injury. Brad Lambert skated on their second line after being recalled from the AHL’s Manitoba Moose earlier on Tuesday. Ville Heinola replaced Colin Miller on the blueline.
Not much happened in the opening 20 minutes with neither team scoring or taking a penalty. Winnipeg outshot the Blues 8-6 in the first.
Just over two and a half minutes into the second, St. Louis came within a few inches of opening the scoring when Kyrou’s shot squeezed through the pads of Connor Hellebuyck and skittered toward the net but Haydn Fleury cleared it away before it crossed the goal line.
St. Louis was given the game’s first power way just under seven minutes into the second when Dylan DeMelo was called for holding the stick but the Blues and their 27th-ranked power play failed to convert.
With 8:30 left in the second, Winnipeg was put on the man advantage when Nathan Walker went to the box for slashing but the Jets’ 2nd-ranked power play struggled as well, failing to register a shot on goal.
The Jets very briefly had a second power play of the night when Jake Neighbours tripped Adam Lowry but on the ensuing faceoff, Gabriel Vilardi was called for interference, setting up 1:56 of 4-on-4 hockey that the Blues took full advantage of.
With player battling for the puck at the Blues’ blueline, the puck squirted out into the neutral zone where it was collected by Brayden Schenn. He carried it into the Winnipeg end before saucing a pass to Jordan Kyrou in the slot. Kyrou tried to toe-drag it around Hellebuyck who got a piece of it but the loose puck bounced off the skate of a backchecking Mark Scheifele and into the open net at the 18:04 mark.
39 seconds later, it was 2-0 St. Louis. Dylan Holloway and Robert Thomas ran a give-and-go inside the Winnipeg blueline, leaving Holloway with the puck in the slot. His initial shot was denied by Hellebuyck but he banged home the rebound to double the Blues’ lead.
St. Louis outshot the Jets by a whopping 19-3 margin in the middle 20 minutes, giving them a two-period advantage of 25-11.
It didn’t get much better for Winnipeg in the third.
Kyrou made it 3-0 at the 6:38 mark when he collected a loose puck in the Winnipeg end, spun and fired a shot from the slot that beat Hellebuyck through a maze of bodies.
With Winnipeg shorthanded later in the period, Lowry had a great chance to get the Jets on the board but he was denied by Winnipegger Joel Hofer on a partial breakaway. It was Winnipeg’s 14th shot of the night just shy of the halfway point of the third.
Facing a three-goal deficit with 5:01 to go, Arniel decided to pull Hellebuyck for an extra attacker, hoping to jump-start a miracle rally and with 4:15 to go, Scheifele buried a juicy rebound past Hofer to make it 3-1 with his first goal in seven games.
With a faceoff coming in the offensive zone with 3:46 remaining, Hellebuyck went to the bench again but Thomas found the empty net just seven seconds later to put the game on ice and send fans flocking to the exits.
Hellebuyck turned aside 28 shots in defeat, while Hofer stopped 22 shots for St. Louis.
The Jets head right back on the road for a date with the Buffalo Sabres Thursday. Pregame coverage on 680 CJOB begins at 4 p.m. with the puck dropping just after 6 p.m.
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