WINNIPEG – The Jets were coming off one of their best efforts of the season and playing their 7th game in 11 days against a tired bunch of Arizona Coyotes and needed a shoot out to get a very important 4-3 victory. It was important in many ways it gives them a seven point cushion between themselves and 9th place Los Angeles Kings, and it also gives them the same amount of points as the Blackhawks to tie them for third place in the Central Division.
“It was a good ending,” Jets coach Paul Maurice said. “It was a really, really good ending.”
Ondrej Pavelec was in the pipes tonight for the Jets and he was solid as he stopped 28 out of 31 shots , plus he made 3 stops in the shoot out to get the win. He improves to 12-10-6 for the season. He was also the game’s first star.
“I thought we dominated for two periods,” Pavelec said. “We stopped playing in the third [period], but we battled hard. It’s not easy. It wasn’t a pretty game, but two points is two points, and we found a way.”
Mike Smith who has had an off year this year stats wise due to the poor play of his team this season was sharp and on his game tonight. He made 27 saves including some huge stops that were game savers and he was the sole reason this game went to extra time. He made a game saver off Bryan Little late in the second period that is sure to be a top 10 save of the year. His record falls to 7-19-3 for the year.
Jets goal scorers were Little with his18th, Michael Frolik his 10th, Dustin Byfuglien his 12th. Little was also the only scorer in the shoot out.
“We didn’t make it easy on ourselves [late in the game],” Little said. “We’d rather not win that way and give up leads, but at the same time, we’re still managing to get wins and still managing to stick with it. [Holding leads is] definitely one area that we could get a little bit better at right now.”
Arizona got goals from Oliver Ekman-Larsson his 12th, Lauri Korpikoski his 4th, Tobias Rieder his 6th of the year.
This was a slow paced game for the most part although the Jets were still the more physical team as they pounded out 37 hits. Face offs were an issue tonight as the Jets were always chasing the puck to start as the Coyotes won 60% of the draws. There were also some very untimely penalties that they took that almost cost them the game.
“I’m a really optimistic person,” Maurice said. “But if you had said that we were going to go 5-1-1 on this seven-game stretch, I certainly would have taken it. I didn’t necessarily think that it would be possible. This is by far the most difficult [part of our] schedule this season.
“I’m really happy with the results, really happy with handling some of the momentum shifts in the games. [There were] contributions from everybody, goaltenders had a piece [of] the wins. Our back end played big, solid minutes [and] generated offense. We got some great night’s forechecking, effort-wise, physicality. So there is just a lot of good in the block [of games].”
The Jets will have a couple days off before the Blue Jackets come to town then they will have a 5 day break during the All Star Weekend.
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