WINNIPEG – In hindsight, every little thing the Winnipeg Jets did to stay within striking distance of the Philadelphia Flyers was leading toward one play. And sure enough, when Blake Wheeler and Mark Scheifele got their look, the puck was in the back of the net.
What else would you expect from one of the league’s best duos?
The Jets started Thursday night’s game at Bell MTS Place by falling behind 2-0 in the first six minutes, but ended it by squaring the affair 2-2 on a Scheifele one-timer with 0:48 seconds remaining in the third and winning it 3-2 when Bryan Little beat Brian Elliott for the decisive goal in the shootout.
The Jets also got a power-play goal from Mathieu Perreault — who returned to the ice after missing 12 games with a lower-body ailment — while Scheifele and Patrik Laine converted shootout attempts before Little. Then there was goalie Connor Hellebuyck, who turned in another strong outing by shutting the door after getting beat early on.
It wasn’t always pretty, but the win represents some progress in the mind of the captain.
“It would have been easy to try and open it up and tie it in five minutes,” said Wheeler. “I think that would have been what we would have tried to do in years past. It’s a good sign of maturity, but we’ve got to play better.”
That was certainly the case in the opening minutes, as the Flyers — including Winnipeg native Nolan Patrick, who returned to the lineup after missing nine games with a concussion — jumped all over the home side. Jakub Voracek banged home the rebound from a Sean Couturier shot to give Philly the lead just 2:27 into the contest. The tally snapped a scoring drought of 158:36 for Philadelphia, which failed to find the net in its past two outings and hadn’t registered a goal since Couturier bagged one in a 3-1 win on Nov. 9 versus the Chicago Blackhawks.
The Flyers didn’t have to wait nearly that long for their next tally, as Couturier — who’s now up to 21 points in 19 games this season — used another second-chance opportunity to score a power-play goal 5:15 into the first.
Rather than fold, though, the Jets did just enough to hang around. Perreault’s second-period goal was a beauty, as Joel Armia sent a seeing-eye pass through the legs of Flyers defenceman Brandon Manning right to his streaking teammate, who juked to his left and beat Elliott on the backhand.
In the third, Philadelphia had a chance to put the game away on the power play, but Brandon Tanev laid out for a couple big blocks and Hellebuyck made some saves that were among the most important of the 30 he put up overall.
Even before that, the line of Adam Lowry between Tanev and Andrew Copp played a crucial role when tasked with shutting down Philly’s top line of Couturier with Voracek and Claude Giroux.
“After the first period they went up against their big boys and changed the flow of the game,” Jets coach Paul Maurice said.
Another thing that altered the match was some rough play, most notably a first-period slash from noted bad boy Radko Gudas on the neck of Perreault after the latter had been knocked to the ice. Initially, Gudas was giving just a two-minute minor. Following a conference by the officials, though, he was given five minutes and a game misconduct.
“He apologized in the penalty box,” said Perreault, who also received a high-sticking penalty on the same sequence, “but when you look at the replay it looks like he did on purpose, it wasn’t an accident. He’s been known for doing stuff like that, so I certainly don’t appreciate it, but I’m sure the league will take care of it.”
The rough stuff continued throughout the game, most notably when Jets defenceman Dustin Byfuglien laid out Flyers winger Jordan Weal with a thunderous open-ice hit.
“I think Buff got pissed off and started hitting guys and that kind of ramped it up a little bit,” Wheeler said.
The bottom line for Winnipeg was, through it all, the club was still just one goal down when Hellebuyck broke for the bench in the waning minutes. With six Jets on the ice, Wheeler controlled the puck behind the goal-line until spotting precisely what he wanted.
“I saw Mark open,” he said. “He’s got an incredible knack for getting open in that spot [at the faceoff dot] and I know he doesn’t need much room, he just needs it on his stick. That shot is just world class.”
The duo nearly struck again in the dying seconds of overtime, this time with the roles reversed. Scheifele teed up Wheeler on a two-on-one and the latter got all the puck, but hooked it wide.
“That’s one, if we lose that game, I probably lose sleep over,” he said.
Instead, its sweat dreams all around for the Jets.
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