COLUMBUS - The Winnipeg Jets open a five-game road trip tonight when they take on the Columbus Blue Jackets for the second time this season.
The Jets (42-19-5) are coming off a convincing 6-0 win over Anaheim on Friday night, and also shut out Columbus 5-0 in January this season.
Columbus (23-33-11) earned a 4-2 win over San Jose at Nationwide Arena on Saturday, and complete a back-to-back set on Sunday against Winnipeg.
For the third straight game, the Jets will be facing a team on the back half of a back-to-back. Columbus earned a 4-2 win over the San Jose Sharks on Saturday, backstopped by 39 saves from Daniil Tarasov.
As always, the Jets aren’t concerning themselves too much with the situation they find their opponent in. With Columbus, they’re last in the Eastern Conference and 17 points away from a wildcard spot, but Neal Pionk says that game against San Jose shows there is a lot of fight in the Blue Jackets.
“Every time we play Columbus, no matter who is on their roster, no matter where they are in the standings, they always work hard,” he said after the morning skate. “That’s the biggest thing. Another thing we talked about this morning was that it’s about us. It’s about how we play and our details, our puck play. That’s what we’ll be focusing on tonight.”
Offensively, Columbus is led by Johnny Gaudreau, who has 50 points in 67 games, including a three-point night against the Sharks.
“You talk to (Sean Monahan) a little bit about their time, their hey day in Calgary together on the same line. He’s a guy that has the speed, he has the skill, and he has the talent,” said Brenden Dillon. “It’s not just a D-pair, or a forward line, I think it takes all five guys to be able to shut down a high-powered offensive guy like that.”
It’s the start of a five-game road trip for the Jets who are 6-4-0 in their last 10. Within that span, the Jets have been searching for the type of consistency that pushed them into the battle for top spot in the Central Division earlier this season.
They’re still winning games, of course, but there are always pieces of their game they want to work on.
“We only have 15 or 16 games left here. Everything at this point is a tune up for where we want to get to,” said Dillon. “A five-game road trip like this where you’re going to different buildings, different schedules, back-to-backs, and all that type of stuff - sometimes you can be a little tired. Communication comes into play when you’re trying to defend as a five-man unit. It’s something we’ve really done well this year, and we’ve seen the result it’s given us.”
So as a busy month of March rolls in to the back half, and still eight games in 13 days to go before it flips to April, Dillon looks at the road trip as an important one - and not just for points in the standings.
“It’s a huge week,” he said. “Looking at this month of March, this was going to be a tough one. A lot of games in a short period of time, travel, some teams fighting for their playoff lives, and some teams like tonight where these are tough ones to play - teams are playing loose.
“It’s going to be a good test for us to play some different styles of hockey against different styles of teams.”
Puck drop is set for 5 pm CT.
PROJECTED LINES
The only change to the Jets line-up from the victory over Anaheim on Friday night comes in goal, where Connor Hellebuyck will put his league-leading goals-against average (2.33) and save percentage (0.921) on the line against Columbus.
In front of him, the Jets are expected to look like this:
Connor-Scheifele-Iafallo
Ehlers-Monahan-Toffoli
Niederreiter-Lowry-Appleton
Barron-Gustafsson-Namestnikov
Morrissey-DeMelo
Dillon-Pionk
Stanley Schmidt
Head coach Rick Bowness planned on tweaking the line-up a bit, but the 6-0 win over the Ducks changed that.
“We were pleased with everyone in a 6-0 win. The shutout was important to us, the defensive play was important to us, the structure was much better all over the ice,” he said. “It’s a busy week. The plan at this point for sure is to get everybody in.”
SHINING SPECIAL TEAMS
The Jets had a perfect night on special teams against Anaheim.
For the first time this season, the power play scored three times in one game - and did so on only three opportunities.
“It’s a confidence boost.,” said Pionk, who assisted on Nate Schmidt’s power play goal in the second period. “Shooting pucks, getting pucks to the net, playing simple. You saw the Toffoli net front goal the other night - that’s what it’s about. Get pucks to the net and getting some good bounces too. I think we were due for a couple of those.”
As for the penalty kill, it kept Anaheim’s power play off the board on all three chances, including an important one in the first period with the score sitting at 0-0.
“We’re always trying to improve on that area from how we started this year,” said Dillon. “It was one of our team strengths last year to finish in the top ten. Coming into this year we wanted to build on that and get in the top five. Obviously the way the first half of the season went, I don’t know how attainable that’s going to be.
“It’s just little things, communication - we’ve obviously worked a few new guys in with (Sean Monahan) coming into the mix, (Alex Iafallo) is killing a lot more, I think that’s really helped us here.”
-- Mitchell Clinton, WinnipegJets.com
