WINNIPEG – After putting together two straight solid road wins, the Jets returned home to face the Boston Bruins for a quick one-game home pit stop before another long road trip where they will play six of their next seven away from MTS Centre. The Bruins arrived in Winnipeg in a snarly mood as they were beaten by the Kings 9-2 the other night and came into tonight with a real nasty attitude. They took out some frustration with a 6-2 drubbing on the Jets.
Tuukka Rask faced only six shots in final 30 minutes in win over Jets – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
“We talked about learning from that game and putting it in the past and moving forward,” said Bruins center Patrice Bergeron, who scored twice. “That’s all that we really can do. I thought that [Thursday] was a great response.”
Winnipeg came flying out of the gate as they were outshooting the Bruins at the midway point of the second period 30-11 before the Bruins took over and outshot them 28-6 the rest of the way.
“It was a good response,” Bruins coach Claude Julien said. “We found our game again, started being smart and doing the right things. I thought the [third period] was a really smart period.”
“Outside of our dressing room, there were a lot of people wondering how we were going to react to that loss, but that was one game. We promised ourselves that we were going to have a good road trip here.”
This was a nasty affair early between these two who haven’t met since opening night as the Jets Chris Thorburn and Bruins tough guy Zac Rinaldo dropped the mitts just two minutes in. A bit later in the first Boston’s Matt Beleskey and Tyler Myers of the Jets dropped the mitts as well In the second period Blake Wheeler and Patrice Bergeron also dropped the gloves and settled their differences.
Connor Hellebuyck started the game in goal for the Jets but was pulled after one period of work after allowing three goals on 11 shots. Michael Hutchinson came in and played the final two periods and stopped 25 of 27 Bruin Shots.
Tuukka Rask was sharp early on for the Bruins and ended the game with 34 saves , he didn’t see much work after the midway mark of the second period as the Jets managed only six shots the last thirty minutes of the game.
“They turned it up to a level that we weren’t able to get to in the second half of the game, and that was the difference,” Jets Blake Wheeler said.
Jets got goals from Bryan Little his 17th and Nikolaj Ehlkers his 13th of the season a power play marker.
Boston got goals from Patrice Bergeron who scored his 20th and 21st of the year , Loui Eriksson his 17th , Brad Marchand his 26th , David Pastrnak his sixth, Jimmy Hayes added an empty netter for his 12th of the year.
The Jets continue to lead the league with 16 empty net goals allowed.
After coming out strong it seemed the Jets ran out of gas and the Bruins just took over and completely shut them down and Winnipeg couldn’t even get out of the neutral zone for the second half of this game.
“The simplest is they got faster, and we got slower,” Jet coach Paul Maurice said. “We couldn’t get to a puck, come up with a puck and when we did we couldn’t move it quickly enough. I don’t have an answer for why that changes.”
Notes: The Jets signed Dustin Byfuglien to a five-year $38 million contract extension earlier this week and now will set their sights on captain Andrew Ladd getting a deal or possibly moving on before the feb.29th trade deadline.
The Jets will head to Edmonton for a Saturday night tilt on Hockey Night In Canada.
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