In Winnipeg, the Colorado Avalanche entered their match with the Jets on an eight-game losing streak.
In a rare complete game effort, the Avs skated off with a 4-1 victory.
Dominic Toninato picked up his first career NHL goal for the Avs.
Semyon Varlamov picked up a big win for Avs over Jets – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
“It felt great,” Toninato said. “It felt great getting the first one out of the way and I can just concentrate on playing my game. But most importantly, we got the win. We’ve been struggling for that, so it was nice to get the win and hopefully we can get rolling now.”
Semyon Varlamov made 24 saves in the win.
“Definitely feeling better now,” Varlamov said. “The win tastes great. It’s been some tough times we’ve been going through the past two months (4-13-5 in past 22 games). The stats aren’t great, we’re losing a lot of games and stuff. We needed this one so bad. We knew how hard, how tough the game was going to be. I’m very proud of the team, the way that they played tonight.”
The Avs improved to 23-23-11.
“We needed that [win]. We needed that bad. And it’s not just the win, it’s the way our team played. Fantastic team effort, real strong commitment to check. All the details of our game and the whole lineup, no passengers. I liked a lot of things we did. Our penalty kill was really good, our top line was going right away,” Avs’ head coach Jared Bednar said after the Avs ended their recent skid.
Brandon Tanev scored the Jets’ lone goal.
“They were a desperate team,” Jets forward Blake Wheeler said. “It’s been going tough for them. There was a certain amount of desperation in their game. We weren’t able to match it often enough.”
Gabriel Landeskog, J.T. Compher and Sven Andrighetto also scored for Colorado.
“Yeah, we knew they were going to be a desperate team coming in, and they were,” Jets defenseman Tyler Myers said. “Give them credit, they played a good 60 minutes of hockey. We didn’t. I thought we got away from simplifying our game a little bit. But we’ve regrouped and bounced back before. We’ll do it next game.”
[WATCH:Â All Avalanche vs. Jets highlights]
Connor Hellebuyck made 31 saves in the loss.
“As forwards, we got to work hard to give the [defense] something off the net. Teams are collapsing real tight on us down low and our [defensemen] are open,” Wheeler said. “Then they expand. We’ve got to be able to give these guys something to shoot at off the net. We’re just getting too many blocked, losing possession time on that. Those are some ideas we can try to incorporate, at the very least keep our possession going so we’re not exiting the zone after that.”
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