Takeaways: Blues take advantage of lifeless Jets in Game 3 rout
You could’ve turned your TV off after the first period.
“We lost the game in the first period. They scored two goals in the first three minutes, got on our heels, crowd got behind them,” Scott Arniel told reporters after the Winnipeg Jets lost 7-2 to the St. Louis Blues in Game 3. “We were terrible in the first period. Game was over in the first.”
Terrible might be even putting it mildly.
In the first five minutes and change, St. Louis had a 2-0 lead and Winnipeg hadn’t even recorded a shot. The Blues were harder on pucks, winning more battles and forechecking relentlessly. The Jets? Lifeless.
There were sprinkles of Déjà vu from Game 1, where Winnipeg looked like a deer in headlights for the first 10 minutes.
“They’re going to come hard, that’s their M.O.,” Josh Morrissey told reporters. “They’re aggressive on the forecheck, and they play an aggressive game, so that’s where we have to do a better job of executing with the puck to move it past that aggressiveness that we didn’t handle well in that first period.”
And Connor Hellebuyck wasn’t there to stop the bleeding. In fact, he enhanced it, allowing two goals against on his first three shots. The fourth goal was a result of a poor attempt at playing the puck behind the net. All in all, six goals against on 25 shots.
Notice a theme? The Blues are quick. And at this pace, this series could turn just as swiftly, if the Jets don’t start coming out of the gate with more juice.
Give credit where it’s due, the Blues found a way to silence the Jets’ most deadly weapons.
Josh Morrissey was hit eight times. Mark Scheifele received seven hits. Adam Lowry absorbed five.
Kyle Connor, as nifty as they come when it comes to finding open space, recorded just one five-on-five shot.
It sure looked like Cole Perfetti scored midway through the second period.
A camera angle showed what looked like pretty clear evidence that the puck crossed the line.
“I saw his glove in the net,” Perfetti told reporters. “Obviously, he made a great save, but I was on the goal line and I saw his glove in the net and the puck on the mesh of the glove. And you see it pretty evidently in the video, I think.”
At first glance, no doubt. It would seem to defy common logic to call that a no-goal. That said, these calls aren’t based on assumptions.
“It really looked like his glove was in the net. But there was never any video where it actually showed the goal line and the puck being over,” Arniel said. “There was nothing, whether it was his glove, bits and pieces of his glove was in the way, or whatever it was. Usually, when it isn’t called a goal, you’ve got to be 100 per cent to overturn it.”
Dylan DeMelo was a late healthy scratch due to illness.
Arniel rolled out the following pairings to start the game:
Josh Morrissey — Neal Pionk
Dylan Samberg — Luke Schenn
Logan Stanley — Colin Miller
• The Morrissey-Pionk pairing was… ugly. They were outshot 7-0 during their 7:25 minutes during five-on-five play — all but one of which were scoring chances — while being hemmed in, continuously, on the forecheck.
• I’m somewhat surprised Arniel didn’t keep Schenn and Stanley together, given how well they fared in Game 2. That said, St. Louis’ speed burned the Jets, and if those two were together, it wouldn’t have been pretty.
