Battle-tested Jets bringing excitement, confidence into pivotal Game 5

WINNIPEG - Game on. Series on.
It's a best of three now.
The Winnipeg Jets are heading back to the Music City on the heels of a tight, 2-1 loss in Game 4 Thursday, but are a confident bunch and aren't at all fazed after handing home ice back to their Central Division counterparts.
The fact is, there's no time to dwell on it. Next up is the most pivotal game of the series - and the most important one in franchise history.

In a 2-2 series like this, the winner of Game 5 has gone on to win the series an incredible 79.4 per cent of the time, all time, in Stanley Cup Playoff history.
"Exciting, really," said Head Coach Paul Maurice on what lies ahead. "On the road, normally, you get a real good chance to play your game. You're not getting too wound up, you're not chasing a lot of things. I thought they played a real good road game in here last night and we're going to have to do the same."

Indeed.
In order for the Jets to come up on top, they'll have to win at least more game away from the Whiteout, amid the bedlam at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena.
"We're confident going in there, that we can have success in their building," defenceman Josh Morrissey said following a team meeting on Friday at Bell MTS Place. "It's a tough building, their fans are great, but we've won there before and that's obviously our goal for Game 5.
"Both teams have had games at home and on the road now, and it's an evened-up series. The next game is extremely important, so I expect it to be at another level in terms of intensity and compete."
The Jets had the opportunity to grab a 3-1 series lead with a victory in Game 4, and Morrissey came oh-so close to opening the scoring early in the first period with an open-net wraparound try, but Predators goalie Pekka Rinne came up with a remarkable, and possibly accidental, stick save to keep the game scoreless.

Rinne slid back into his net after saving a Bryan Little shot in tight, and as the puck found its way to Morrissey on the opposite side, his goal stick tumbled out of his hands, flipped upside down and landed perfectly in time with the blueliner's backhand bid.
Morrissey and the rest of the 15,321 on hand couldn't believe it. It was a moment that, had the puck gone in, could have changed the complexion of the game (and series) entirely.
"It was sort of a scramble around the net, and he's a goalie that battles really hard in the crease. Until that puck crosses the line, he's going to make that desperation move or save, and unfortunately - I don't know if he'd tell you it was on purpose - but it ended up being a great save and I just looked skyward. I couldn't believe," Morrissey said.
"For it to hit square on the knob and stay out, it's something I've never seen before. It's unfortunate that it didn't go in, but it is what it is.
"Every night there are plays - goals that could have gone in, goals that do go in, a bouncing puck here and there - and you just have to move forward. I thought we played well enough to put ourselves in a hockey game, but a couple breaks go our way and we might have had a different outcome, but we'll look at things we could do better and be ready to go and go to another level for Game 5."

The Jets outshot the Predators 33-29 and had the majority (13-8) of the high-danger scoring chances, but trailed by a pair after 40 minutes and found it tough to manufacture offence when their opponent protected its two-goal lead with a suffocating style throughout the third period.
Bryan Little said "it was like skating into a wall."
Content to sit back, the Preds clogged up the neutral zone so effectively, the Jets were unable to use their speed to gain entry, and their dumps lacked the force needed to create retrieval opportunities down low.
"They played the exact same way that they played with a 3-0 lead (in Game 3) but we were much more efficient with how we moved," Maurice said. "We didn't do things as well, and they didn't push back as hard, so there was more neutral zone time. There was nothing going on the rush for us, pretty much all game. … We're usually pretty good in those games."
While the Presidents' Trophy winners have certainly done that to many with great success this year, Morrissey believes the Jets fed into it as well. With a strong, puck-handling goalie like Rinne, and a D core as mobile as Nashville's can be, dump ins and rims have to be hard so the wingers on the opposite side can chase down the loose puck, gain possession and set things up offensively.
Instead, the Preds choked up at the blue line, forced turnovers and just flipped it back into the neutral zone, killing time and forcing the Jets to expend energy trying to do it all over again.
"They were trying to create a hard stand in the neutral zone, especially at their blue line," the defenceman said. "I thought we tried to navigate our way through that a bit too much as opposed to getting the puck behind them and creating a battle down low in their end where we could get a retrieval, get possession and get some o-zone time going. You've got to tip your hat to them as well. They played a hard, greasy road game. We'll watch videos and figure out some ways that we can handle that again if we're ever in that situation going forward in the series."
- Ryan Dittrick, WinnipegJets.com