Jets aim to step up defensively in Game 4 with Dillon day to day

DENVER -- The Winnipeg Jets were breathing a sigh of relief when they found out defenseman Brenden Dillon is day to day with the hand injury he sustained following their 6-2 loss to the Colorado Avalanche in Game 3 of the Western Conference First Round on Friday.

Whether or not Dillon plays, however, the Jets will have to up their defensive game to try to slow down the Avalanche, who have a 2-1 lead in the best-of-7 series heading into Game 4 here Sunday (2:30 p.m. ET; MAX, truTV, TNT, ALT, SN360, SN, TVAS).

Still, their chances improve if they have Dillon, who plays on the second defense pair with Neal Pionk and is averaging 21:04 of ice time per game in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, fourth among their defensemen.

“Listen, he’s one of our toughest competitors, tremendous teammate and he gives you 100 percent every shift out there. He’s tough as nails, he battles everybody, he blocks shots,” Winnipeg coach Rick Bowness said Saturday. “I mean, he does everything you want your veteran D to do and he’s a great leader on the ice and in the room. He brings a lot to the table for us.”

So how to shore things up against the Avalanche, with or without Dillon? The Jets were doing a good job of that through the first two periods of Game 3, when Colorado was getting its scoring opportunities but goalie Connor Hellebuyck was keeping them out of the net.

Once they got on the penalty kill in the third period, however, things fell apart. The Jets need to quell the Avalanche power play, which scored two goals in the third (Ross Colton’s goal was two seconds after another Colorado power play ended) and changed the complexion of the game.

Winnipeg also has to regain its composure quicker when things go wrong.

“Just stay with it,” Pionk said Saturday. “I know it’s cliché, but we’ve got to play a full 60. We have these five-, six-, seven-minute lapses that are really slipping away from us.

“I think in a couple of games we’ve given up two, three goals in a five-minute span. So, we’ve got to stick with it and the leaders have to lead. We’ve got to make some plays when they’re there, and if they’re not, flip it out and restart.”

There could be some lineup changes as well. One addition could be forward Axel Jonsson-Fjallby, whom the Jets recalled from Manitoba, their American Hockey League affiliate, on Saturday.

“Axel’s been playing a lot down there, he’s been killing penalties,” Bowness said. “He gives us more speed and we need some help on the penalty kill at this point. If he plays, and we’ll talk about those things today, that’s what we’re going to use him on.”

As for the other side, Winnipeg has scored two goals in each of the past two games, but that hasn’t been nearly enough against Colorado. Bowness said after Game 3 that the Jets couldn’t keep passing up shot opportunities, but they also had to be selective.

“I think you've got to look at everything in its own lens, right?” Jets captain Adam Lowry said. “You don’t want to waste a shot just to say, ‘Oh, I got the puck there,’ but have no one at the net. Kind of, like I said, the one-and-done that allows them to transition the puck.

“But, at the same time, if we have bodies going to the net, if we have numbers, we've got to do a better job of getting in front of (Colorado goaltender Alexandar) Georgiev, force him to make second and third stops, and creating that scramble. When we're playing well and we have guys in motion and we’re going to the net, you tend to get those loose pucks recovered. You can go low to high. You can create some more sustained pressure and it really causes confusion and causes them to have to make decisions on their sort-outs because they're collapsing to the net and then you're spreading the zone.”

The Jets know what they have to do to even the series. It’s just a matter of doing it from start to finish.

“Every game is going to be different in this series," Lowry said. "We’re just going to look to bounce back. Kind of what Colorado did. We were able to get the upper hand in Game 1, they played really well in Game 2 and got the split. That’s our job now, to take care of business tomorrow.”