Lackluster Jets drop fourth straight, topple from top spot

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Published Dec 03, 2024  •  Last updated 2 hours ago  •  4 minute read

Winnipeg Jets' Adam Lowry looks to pass the puck as he is checked by St. Louis Blues' Jordan Kyrou Tuesday night. Fred Greenslade/The Canadian Press

The Winnipeg Jets’ first three-game skid of the season quickly became a four-game slide on Tuesday night – on home ice, no less.

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Two sleeps in their own beds for a change didn’t take the sleep out of a team that’s now lost seven of their last 10 games, the latest a lackluster 4-1 defeat at the hands of the sub-.500 St. Louis Blues.

Check that – the win dragged the Blues, somewhat rejuvenated under new coach Jim Montgomery, to 12-12-2.

The Jets? Now 18-8 and out of top spot, behind Minnesota, in the NHL’s Western Conference.

“There’s some mental things that are happening and you go ‘Wow, where did that come from?'” head coach Scott Arniel said, citing his team’s difficult schedule of late for what he said would be the last time.

That lofty, 15-1 start seems ancient history now, a combination of road weariness, game unawareness, perhaps an injury or two and an offence gone quiet humbling hockey’s surprise team of the first month and a half.

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Passing too often and not getting into the dirty areas are what Arniel pointed to as his team has scored just six times in the last four games.

“Sometimes it’s the opposition trying to keep you out of there,” the coach said. “But sometimes it’s your will to go inside there and go get those second chances. The attack mindset is something that we’ve had for most of the year but now we’re deferring.”

Centre Mark Scheifele, hampered by an undisclosed injury that kept him out of the faceoff circle for several games and forced him to start this one on the wing, scored his team’s only goal with Connor Hellebuyck out of the net and some four minutes left.

But any thoughts of a miracle finish were dashed with an empty-net goal by Robert Thomas less than a minute later.

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“Everyone’s gunning for us,” Scheifele said. “And they know they’ve got to play us hard. It’s just a matter of getting back to looking at the blueprint that we were doing earlier, and just try to get back to that.”

The Jets played a shuffled lineup, inserting 20-year-old rookie Brad Lambert onto the roster with Nik Ehlers facing at least a week on the sidelines with a foot injury.

They needed much more than youthful exuberance on this night.

Final shots were 32-21, St. Louis.

Some in the crowd of 13,100 went home happy: Winnipegger Joel Hofer got the win for the Blues, in front of what he estimated to be 15 to 20 family and friends.

St. Louis has been a punching bag for the Jets in recent years, losing the last four and Winnipeg holding a 12-1-1 mark in their last 14 meetings.

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Neither team tossed many punches in the first period.

That gave way to a high-contact second, although virtually everything was landed by the visiting team in the Winnipeg zone, the Blue turning a scoreless game into their own, scoring twice and out-shooting the home side, 19-3, in the process.

“We were trying to play cute hockey,” Arniel said. “We were trying to make highlight-reel plays. We weren’t playing north-south and forcing them to defend like we did in the first. They spent pretty much the whole period in our end of the rink.”

The goals came within 39 seconds of each other, both in the final two minutes of the period, both four-on-four, as Hellebuyck could only hold them at bay for so long.

Jordan Kyrou got credit for the first one, his rebound going off Scheifele’s skate and in.

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They’d barely announced that one when Dylan Holloway was left untouched to deposit his own rebound, as the Jets defence sprung leak after leak, Hellebuyck with not enough fingers to plug them all.

That second St. Louis marker brought out some boo-birds who expected more from a team finally back home after a grueling, six-game road trip.

“We started to make 50-foot passes and 100-foot passes coming through the neutral zone,” Arniel said.

Kyrou all but put the Jets out of their misery in the third period, given all kinds of time to collect a loose puck, spin around in the deep slot and fire his second past Hellebuyck as five players in blue simply watched.

The Jets’ stay at home will be brief: on Wednesday they leave for Buffalo and a Thursday tilt with the Sabres, followed by a Saturday afternoon game in Chicago.

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After that it’s four in a row at home, beginning Sunday against Columbus.

What the home team will look like by then is anybody’s guess.

“We had a lot of good fortune here long before these four games,” Arniel said. “It’s swung the other way now. It’s sticking together and making sure that we go out and do what we do best, and that’s defend first and play a simple game.”

Haydn Fleury put it another way.

“The first little bit of adversity we’ve had this year,” the defenceman said. “Nobody likes to deal with it, but the only way to get through it is as a team… we have to look ourselves in the mirror and really dig deep, because this isn’t going to get any easier.”

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