An incredible run on the road came to an end for the Winnipeg Jets tonight as they fell 4-1 to the Tampa Bay Lightning at AMALIE Arena and see their record drop to 15-2-0. The Jets franchise best road winning streak to start a season ends at seven and they missed out on becoming the fifth team in NHL history to start 8-0 on the road. Adam Lowry scored the lone goal for the Jets who went 0-for-4 on the power play. Eric Comrie saw his five-game winning streak as a Jet come to an end as well, he made 32 saves. Winnipeg will wrap up their road trip Saturday against the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers.
UNCHARACTERSTIC START
The Jets have defended well consistently throughout this season, so it was a bit surprising to see them turn the puck over early in the first period. Winnipeg was on an odd man rush heading through the neutral zone when they turned the puck over and Tampa went back the other way and that led to Jake Guentzel opening the scoring at 7:24. In the second period, Brandon Hagel got in behind Vladislav Namestnikov in the slot and he beat Comrie for a 2-0 Lightning lead. That marked the first time the Jets trailed by multiple goals in a game on the road this season. Shortly after the Hagel goal, Dylan DeMelo was penalized for hooking and Anthony Cirelli would cash in on that power play giving Tampa a 3-0 lead 24 minutes into the game.
"We knew they were gonna come after us and they did. Took us a little bit to get into it, I thought we got up and running probably the last seven or eight minutes of the first," said Scott Arniel.
"We had some opportunities, we had some chances. They capitilized on theirs."
THE CAPTAIN GIVES LIFE
Adam Lowry took away some of the momentum from the home team when he got the Jets on the board just under three minutes after Cirelli gave the Lightning a three-goal lead. Lowry went to the front of the net as Colin Miller unloaded a shot from the point, the Jets captain redirected it past Andrei Vasilevskiy (who registered his 300th career win becoming the fastest ever to reach the milestone in 490 GP). It was the third goal of the season for Lowry and his first since October 20.
