In Winnipeg, the Jets continued to slump on Saturday, with a 4-0 loss to the visiting Philadelphia Flyers. 
Carter Hart made 40 saves for the shutout.
“It’s definitely something cool, growing up as a kid, ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ Saturday nights was always on in the household,” said Hart. “It’s always something kind cool and kind of a Canadian trademark, so it’s kind of fun to play in these games.”
Noah Cates scored in the first period to give the Flyers all the offense they needed in a 1-0 lead.
“Carter just was solid. He made some really good saves,” Philadelphia coach John Tortorella said. “Everybody contributed. It’s great we scored four goals, but I liked our checking. I thought our positioning was good. That’s a really good offensive team. That’s a big team, but our sticks were good. That’s the part of the game I liked.”
The Flyers moved to 21-21-9.
“Being hungry around the net, it’s just got to be my game,” Cates said. “It’s how I need to score goals in this league. It’s just kind of sticking with it and going from there.”
The Jets dropped to 31-19-1; Winnipeg has lost lost three in a row, and five of their past seven.
“There is a price to pay in this league,” Winnipeg coach Rick Bowness said. “You have to work, you have to compete, and you have to do it every night. As the season progresses, it gets harder. Right now, you’re seeing what we’re seeing, as soon as there is a little adversity — we handled it well early in the year — we’re not handling it well right now. The difference makers, you can’t even find them out there. Until we make that commitment again to play as a team and we want to win, this is what you get.”
The Flyers pushed the lead out to 2-0 in the middle frame on Kieffer Bellows‘s first goal of the campaign.
“We haven’t loved our last few games and we’ve got one left going into the [NHL All-Star] break,” Jets forward Adam Lowry said. “It feels like the sky is falling a bit, but we’re still in a good spot. … Obviously we’re disappointed with the effort, disappointed with the outcome, three games in a row that we’ve kind of let slip away. You’re going to want to stop this slide as soon as we can.”
The Flyers posted two markers in the third period to put distance between them and the Jets.
“We’re feeling good about ourselves going into the break with a win,” Hart said. “We’ve had a really good month here in January (8-4-2) and we’ve got a couple of more big months coming down the stretch.”
Owen Tippett scored off a breakaway for a 3-0 advantage.
“If [Winnipeg scores] one early, it puts a whole different light on that [third] period,” Tortorella said. “The third one, it kind of sets them back a little bit. And then the fourth one, it really hurts. Again, it comes to the checking. We had good sticks. We had the middle of the ice quite a bit tonight. We blocked a lot of shots the second half of the game.”
Connor Hellebuyck got the start, and surrendered all four Flyers goals (26 saves) through the third period, he was given the hook after the fourth goal, scored by Tony DeAngelo.
David Rittich made three saves in a mop up role.


You must be logged in to post a comment.