In Winnipeg, the Jets’ Connor Hellebuyck made 40 saves on Tuesday night in a 5-0 shutout of the Colorado Avalanche.
“[Wheeler’s] just been on fire,” Hellebuyck said. “His workload and work ethic was so good and so strong. When he’s playing the right way, he’s just dominating play. We all know what kind of player he is. When he gets in that rhythm, honestly, he works twice as hard as everyone else on this team.”
The Jets moved to 14-6-1.
Blake Wheeler hit for a hat trick for the Jets.
“[Hellebuyck’s] been our best player all year,” Wheeler said. “For a guy whose won a Vezina and been second [in Vezina voting] before, this is the best I’ve seen him play. He’s been the backbone of our team for a long time. He’s just taken his game to another level and given us an opportunity to win every night.”
Colorado dropped to 12-7-1.
“We had some hard-working guys, but when you’re a short, depleted roster you can’t have any passengers, and we just had too many of them tonight,” Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. “You look at the goals we gave up, they were odd-man rushes and grade A scoring chances from them on the rush attack.
“I thought we had some good effort at times, but there was a lot of things in our checking side of our game that was effort-based and puck decisions. It just didn’t look like we were engaged enough to go and win a tough road game against a good team.”
Mark Scheifele struck for a goal and three points in the win.
“We’ve got to look at what we did wrong,” Avalanche forward Andrew Cogliano said. “We gave them some opportunities off the rush which they capitalized on, and ultimately, we weren’t good enough. They were better. We had a decent game going but we just weren’t pushing through enough to create opportunities and create goals and that’s on us as forwards to get a little grittier at the net and make second opportunities happen. We’ve got to be better. At the end of the day; not good enough from us.”
Josh Morrissey added a single marker for the Jets, his goal came in the second period to give the Jets a 2-0 lead.
“Tonight the big guys stepped up, clearly,” Winnipeg coach Rick Bowness said. “Connor made the big saves when he had to. I know they had a lot of shots in the third, but they only had a couple chances right at the end, so I’m not too concerned about that. We started to play our hockey as the game went on.”
Alexandar Georgiev made 18 saves in the Avs loss.
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