The good news for the Winnipeg Jets is that they availed themselves well, on the road, against the best team in the NHL.
But when you’re nearing the midway point of the season and are sitting just two points from the bottom of the league standings, there is no time for moral victories as the losses pile up.
The latest defeat for the Jets came Friday night in Denver, a 3-2 loss to the Colorado Avalanche that extended their losing streak to three games and dropped them to 3-9-1 on the road since the start of November.
The Avalanche jumped out to a two-goal lead in the first period and while the Jets played them tight for the final two periods, they still came up short against the Avs who won their fourth game in a row and have still not lost in regulation on home ice all season.
“There was a lot of good things,” said Jets head coach Scott Arniel. “You don’t want to get down to that team, that quick, two-nothing obviously. But at the end of the day, we stayed in the game. I thought there was a lot more battle, a lot more compete. I thought that we had some really good looks and opportunities. That was a better effort than obviously the last one.
“We got to find a way. We got to find a way to get over that hump of winning those games. Right now, we’re a delicate, fragile group and we’re finding ways to lose games.”
Brent Burns, Martin Necas, and Parker Kelly scored the markers for Colorado.
The Jets went more than 120 straight minutes of hockey without scoring a goal until Morgan Barron ended the drought in the final minute of the second period with a shorthanded tally. Mark Scheifele scored the Jets only other goal on the power play in the third.
But the Jets continue to find themselves chasing games after falling behind early.
“Got to find a way to, I guess, not put ourselves in those holes,” Barron said. “It feels like we’re right there but got to take the next step and find a way to get two points, I guess.
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“I think we liked our game better. But again, the frustrating part is it’s kinda been our Achilles’ heel. Feels like a lot of times when we play poorly, or play okay, that’s a one-goal game – we just can’t kinda find that extra juice to squeeze two points out of it.”
Slumping Jets forward Cole Perfetti was dropped to the fourth line and was then benched for much of the third period, getting only nine seconds of ice time in the final frame.
“That was just a coach’s decision,” said Arniel.
Colorado showed off its speed right from the get-go, with Brock Nelson getting free on a 2-on-1 and Artturi Lehkonen getting behind the defence for a solid chance, but Connor Hellebuyck turned aside both.
But the Avalanche broke the ice just shy of the midway point of the frame.
The play began with a point shot that went wide of the net and bounced off the end boards back towards the faceoff dot. Several Jets watched as Jack Drury raced onto it first, starting a cycle that resulted in Burns getting the puck at the opposite point.
He tried to send a pass to a cutting Drury in the slot and at first glance, it appeared that Drury steered the pass into the net, but it actually banked in off the skate of Haydn Fleury, giving Burns his fifth goal of the season.
Just over five minutes later, the Avalanche doubled their lead. Lehkonen corralled a loose puck in his own end and quickly sent it out to the neutral zone where Nathan MacKinnon was waiting for it. He carried the puck into the Winnipeg end as Necas sped past Perfetti towards the net. MacKinnon fed it across to Necas and he made no mistake, beating Hellebuyck for his 15th of the season.
The Jets nearly got on the board in the final seconds as the puck sat loose, inches from the goal line behind Scott Wedgewood but Winnipeg couldn’t get a stick on it before the whistle was blown.
Winnipeg held the Avalanche in check in the second as they got a first-hand look at the weakest part of Colorado’s game. The Avalanche had three power plays, but for some reason, the turbo-charged Avalanche attack stinks on the power play, sitting in 25th place entering the night at only 15.7 per cent.
The Jets killed off a Scheifele holding penalty early in the period, a too-many-men call with just over seven minutes left, and then Perfetti was called for tripping with 56 seconds to go.
That seemed to indicate that the Jets would be entering the third period trailing by at least two goals, but they flipped the script on Colorado and scored a massive shorthanded marker.
Alex Iafallo banked the puck high off the boards and down the ice, and a streaking Barron got past Cale Makar and got to the puck first. He took it to the net, drove wide on Wedgewood and tucked a backhand past the netminder before Makar could get back to give the Jets a huge boost entering the third.
It was Barron’s second shorthanded goal of the season and his third goal overall in his last five outings after going 20 games without a goal.
While Winnipeg was able to continue the remainder of the Perfetti penalty to start the third, Colorado struck at even strength at the 1:58 mark when Parker Kelly tipped a Josh Manson point shot through Hellebuyck to make it 3-1 and take the wind out of Winnipeg’s sails.
The Jets earned their second power play of the night 3:31 into the third when Gabriel Vilardi was hooked by Devon Toews and just six seconds later, Winnipeg cashed in.
Off a won faceoff, the Jets got the puck to Gustav Nyquist at the left point, playing up on the top unit in place of a demoted Perfetti. He skated with the puck before sending a perfect backdoor pass to Scheifele that he steered into the net for his team-leading 17th of the season.
Colorado briefly thought they had made it 4-2 with 10:38 remaining when a shot was tipped past Hellebuyck with a high stick. Officials immediately waved it off and replays confirmed that Kelly’s stick was several feet above the crossbar when it last touched the puck.
Kelly had another good look with less than four minutes to go when he rung one off the crossbar in transition.
The Avalanche did an excellent job of milking the clock away in the dying minutes, pinning the puck along the boards in the Jets’ end on two separate occasions, resulting in Winnipeg not being able to pull Hellebuyck until there was just one minute left.
Winnipeg was unable to generate anything dangerous with the goalie pulled as time expired before the Jets could complete the comeback.
Hellebuyck turned aside 23 shots in the loss while Wedgewood made 20 in victory.
The Jets will play their final game before Christmas Sunday in Utah. The puck drops just after 6 p.m. with pregame coverage on 680 CJOB starting at 4 p.m.
