LAS VEGAS — They say what happens here is supposed to stay here. The Winnipeg Jets better hope that’s the case when it comes to their sorry special teams play.
Quite simply, this team can’t afford to keep coming up short on the power play and the penalty kill if they want to be taken seriously as a legitimate contender.
Thursday night on the Sin City Strip, in what ended up being a 5-2 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights, was one of the more engregious displays of the young season in that department.
(AP Photo/David Becker) Winnipeg Jets left wing Alex Iafallo controls the puck against Vegas Golden Knights defencemen Alec Martinez (23) and Alex Pietrangelo (7) during the first period Thursday, in Las Vegas.
With the game tied 1-1 early in the second period, Jets forward Mason Appleton caught Golden Knights defenceman Alec Martinez with a high-stick, drawing blood. That’s an automatic double-minor under NHL rules. And, in this case, it led to two quick power play goals for the home team to basically put this one to bed.
Good Knight, Winnipeg.
“For us to give up two goals like we did, line changes and giving up odd-man rushes … we didn’t have to give up on those two goals,” a frustrated associate coach Scott Arniel told the Free Press following the game. “Those are on us. Those type of things you can control, they’re in your own grasp to handle and we got to be better at that.”
Kyle Connor and Alex Iafallo scored for the Jets, while Jonathan Marchessault recorded a hat trick to go with William Karlsson and Ivan Barbashev’s single tallies.
Vegas improves to a sizzling 10-0-1, off to the best start by any Stanley Cup champion in NHL history. Winnipeg falls to 4-4-2 and winless in the last three games (0-1-2).
Here’s our detailed breakdown of the action:
1) If only they could play five-on-five all night: At even strength, the Jets are a mostly rock-solid group. Dominant at times, in fact. After Karlsson opened the scoring in the first period, Connor got Winnipeg right back in it with a dazzling individual effort that will go on his personal highlight reel at 6:17 of the middle frame.
“It was a good breakout. Got it out wide. The D started sliding even before I even made a play, so he kind of made up my mind for me just to take that ice in the front,” Connor said of his team-high sixth of the year. “If you can go back against the grain – especially on a backhand – I don’t think he’s really expecting that, the goaltender. So that was my mindset coming back there to the middle.”
Unfortunately for the visitors, Appleton took the four-minute penalty only 13 seconds later.
“You know what? For those first (six-plus) minutes of that second, we were dominating them, hemmed them in their end of the rink,” said Arniel. “It happens. Apple didn’t mean to do that.”
Marchessault scored 30 seconds later to restore Vegas’ lead as Winnipeg attempted a line change with all four skaters at once, which led to Golden Knights netminder Logan Thompson sending a perfect outlet pass from his own end to Mark Stone, who sprang Marchessault for the breakaway.
“That was just a critical error by us,” said Arniel.
Barbashev made it 3-1 just 98 seconds after that with Appleton, one of the team’s top penalty killers, serving the second half of his sentence.
2) Some light at the end of the power play tunnel?: Of course, Winnipeg could perhaps weather the penalty killing storm a big better if their own power play was going well. But it hasn’t been, and they were 0-for-3 through two periods, extending a drought to 16 straight attempts spanning the past five games.
But then a Connor shot on their fourth chance of the night hit both Cole Perfetti and Iafallo to beat Thompson at 1:51 of the third period to give the Jets a spark. There was nothing fancy about the play. Just shooting the puck and getting a little luck, something that’s been missing greatly so far this year.
“Sometimes that’s what it needs on the power play – even five on five – is just to get one of those. Just pucks and bodies around the net,” said Connor.
Hope for a comeback was snuffed out when Marchessault took advantage of another bad Winnipeg line change to get his second of the game at 5:47, and he finished off the hat trick with an empty-netter at 17:08.
Winnipeg has only scored on the power play in five of 10 games this year, and never more than a single goal in a game. However, they’ve now surrendered a power play goal in nine of those 10 games.
“Special teams is huge tonight. You know, we’ve got to still work harder to get more power play goals and get more momentum,” said Iafallo, who is now up to four goals on the year. “Just got to work on special teams a little more, clarify a few things and work a little harder in certain areas and just try to stay positive going forward.”
Overall, the Jets are now ranked 24th in the league on the power play at 12.8 per cent, and 30th on the penalty kill at 69.8 per cent.
3) The Golden Knights are good: It’s easy to see why there’s been no championship hangover here in Las Vegas. Coach Bruce Cassidy has these guys playing every shift like it’s sudden death overtime in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.
Take Thursday’s first period, for example. Winnipeg had 16 shot attempts, but Thompson only had to stop five pucks. That’s because his teammates blocked eight of them — 50 per cent — while Jets shooters missed the net on the other three.
For the game, Vegas ended up with a whopping 24 blocks. Winnipeg had seven.
“That’s their DNA. If you watched their playoffs all the way through. We saw lots of them. That’s what they do well,” said Arniel. “Their defencemen do a great job – and their forwards – of getting into the lanes to make it hard on you. You’ve got to work to one: to get shots and two: if it does get through down to the net, you’ve got to work to get rebounds and find those second and third opportunities.”
4) The line blender was out in full force: Arniel shuffled the deck in the third period, trying out various line combinations in a hope to find a spark. We won’t list them all here for the sake of brevity.
“I switched everybody. I was trying to get something going,” said Arniel.
“I switched our defence partners. I really didn’t like after we gave up the two goals (while shorthanded), we got real sloppy there for the last 10 minutes of the second period and it was wide open. I just wanted to kind of reset everybody. We got ourselves going again in the third, got some good shifts and we scored that power play goal and made it 3-2 and we were hoping to make it a little bit better and then (gave up) another tough one.”
5) Extra, Extra: Backup goaltender Laurent Brossoit was given a warm welcome back, including a tribute video, during a first period TV timeout. He was also presented with his Stanley Cup ring earlier in the day by Golden Knights officials.
Three Jets players — Perfetti, Neal Pionk and Nikolaj Ehlers — wore neck guards during the game. They’re the first Winnipeg skaters to do that in the wake of the Adam Johnson on-ice death last weekend in England. Rasmus Kupari and Vladislav Namestnikov have also been trying them out in practices this week.
Winnipeg scratched the same three skaters for a sixth straight game — defencemen Logan Stanley and Declan Chisholm and forward Dominic Toninato.
Thompson stopped 29 of 31 shots, while Connor Hellebuyck made 21 saves on 25 shots.
The Jets chartered to Tempe following the game and will practice there on Friday afternoon, ahead of Saturday’s matinee against the Arizona Coyotes. The road trip then ends on Tuesday night in St. Louis against the Blues.
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Mike McIntyre
Sports reporter
Mike McIntyre grew up wanting to be a professional wrestler. But when that dream fizzled, he put all his brawn into becoming a professional writer.
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