WASHINGTON – Throughout the long 82-game season, teams will come upon games tabbed as ‘measuring stick’ games. An opportunity to see how one team’s game stacks up against another.
Often those games come against division rivals or opponents within the same conference.
While tonight’s tilt between the Winnipeg Jets and Washington Capitals isn’t either of those two examples (unless one wants to think back to the old Southeast Division days), it’s certainly a game that grabs their attention.
After all, the Jets (36-14-3) lead the Western Conference with 75 points – seven clear of the Edmonton Oilers and Vegas Golden Knights in the Pacific Division – and the Capitals (34-11-6) hold down top spot in the Eastern Conference.
Talk about a fun way to end a road trip.
“Obviously they’re having a fantastic year and so are we. It’s exciting,” said defenceman Josh Morrissey. “You want to see where you stack up and you want to show that your game is amongst the best in the league. It should be an exciting game tonight. At the end of the day, for us, it comes down to focusing on what we can control and the details that make us a good team.”
These two teams find themselves not only at the top of the standings, but at the top of another important statistical category: Goal Differential.
Winnipeg leads the league in that category at plus-63 and Washington is second at plus-54. In terms of average goals per game, the Jets lead the way at 3.58, followed closely by Washington’s 3.49. Goals against per game is just as close, with Washington’s 2.39 standing as the lowest in the NHL. Guess who is right behind them? Winnipeg at 2.40.
“They're going to try to get to their game as fast as they can, and that's what we talked about in Boston, we talked about in Montreal and we did an even better job in Boston,” said head coach Scott Arniel. “How fast we can get playing Jet hockey is going to be a key for us, and they're going to try to take that away from us, but there's lots of things that they're doing well that we've got to be aware of."
Two of the league’s best goaltenders will also do battle tonight. Connor Hellebuyck has a league-leading 32 wins and is 17-2-2 in his last 21 games, while Logan Thompson comes into the game with a 23-2-3 record this season.
No changes are expected to Winnipeg’s lines, which looked like this at the morning skate:
Connor-Scheifele-Vilardi
Perfetti-Namestnikov-Ehlers
Niederreiter-Kupari-Appleton
Iafallo-Gustafsson-Ford
Morrissey-DeMelo
Samberg-Pionk
Stanley-Miller
The current three-game road trip has been a successful one for the Jets. It began with a 4-1 victory over Montreal, a win that was followed up by a 6-2 triumph in Boston – a memorable evening that saw Parker Ford score his first National Hockey League goal and Mark Scheifele tie Ilya Kovalchuk for the all-time franchise goal-scoring lead (328).
Now in the final road game before the 4 Nations Face-Off, the Jets want to put an exclamation mark on a perfect road trip.
“Especially the Boston game, we wanted to have a good start. We wanted to limit the middle of the ice and not give them a ton of chances. I thought we did a pretty good job of that,” said Morrissey. “That’s been a strength of our group throughout the season - all four lines committing to playing the right way at both ends of the ice. Teams are going to get their looks, that’s part of the game, but trying to minimize second and third opportunities - or the free opportunities - that you give teams when you’re not playing the right way.
“We’ve done a great job of that this year, and a good job of that on this road trip and lately. We want to finish it off the right way.”
Speaking of road trips, the Capitals have just returned from a five-game trek of their own. They went 3-1-1 on the trip with wins in Edmonton, Seattle, and Calgary. They lost in Vancouver to the Canucks and wrapped up the trip with a 5-4 overtime loss in Ottawa.
"They're having a great season, and to run into each other at this time just before the break, it's a pretty high water mark test,” said Arniel. “Guys are excited for it, the top in the East, top in the West, so we'll see what happens."
Puck drop is set for 6 pm CT.
