The Winnipeg Jets struggles at Washington continued this afternoon with a 3-0 loss to the Capitals at Capital One Arena. Winnipeg is winless in their last 11 visits to Washington (0-7-4) and haven’t beat the Capitals on the road since January 22, 2013. It’s the sixth time this season the Jets have been shutout and will look to get back to their goal scoring ways when they host the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday.
DIFFERENT LOOK
After the way they played on Long Island yesterday, there was no doubt the Jets would change up their lines on Sunday. Scott Arniel altered his first three lines that looked like this for most of the afternoon.
Ehlers – Scheifele – Appleton
Connor – Monahan – Namestnikov
Niederreiter – Lowry – Toffoli
Perfetti – Barron – Iafallo
The Jets had plenty of scoring opportunities in the first two periods but ran into a hot Charlie Lindgren who ended up with big saves on Kyle Connor, Nikolaj Ehlers and Sean Monahan rang one off the crossbar. In the end, the Jets had a much better performance and deserved a better fate than the final score.
“The power play had some good looks, five-on-five, we had some good looks. We just couldn’t score,” said Dylan DeMelo.
“We couldn’t put that one in to get us going. But we competed our butts off and that game could have gone either way.”
MUCH BETTER DEFENDING
After three consecutive games of allowing at least 40 shots, the Jets went to work this afternoon limiting the Capitals to just 11 shots through the first two periods. The Jets did give up a power play goal at the start of the third period when John Carlson fired a slap shot past Connor Hellebuyck to make it 1-0. Just over two minutes later, Washington would add to that when Alex Ovechkin scored the 54th goal of his career against the Jets on a fluky goal. Ovechkin would score his second of the game when he was sent in alone on Hellebuyck and is now 46 behind Wayne Gretkzy for the all-time goal scoring lead.
SPECIAL TEAMS
It was Mark Scheifele’s slashing penalty close to the end of the second that led to Washington’s first goal of the game (and the game winner). The Jet’s power play had some good looks but, in the end, couldn’t beat Lindgren and that was the story on their five-game road trip as Winnipeg went 1-11 (9.1%) with the man advantage and their penalty kill went 7-for-12 (58.3%).
