After early alarm, Jets wake up and beat Wild

By Scott Taylor/Photos by James Carey Lauder

The Winnipeg Jets got an early wakeup call on Sunday afternoon.

After they shut off the alarm, however, it turned out to be a pretty good day at the office.

Jets celebrate Bryan Little’s goal. (Photo by James Carey Lauder)

On Sunday, in front of another capacity crowd of 15,294 at MTS Centre, Minnesota Wild forward Jason Zucker, beat Jets defenseman Jacob Trouba with a brilliant move then scored on Jets goalie Michael Hutchinson at the 10-second mark of the first period.

But that did nothing ore than wake up the Jets. Bryan Little scored to tie the game at 1:22 of the first period, the first of five straight goals by the Jets, who eventually had to fight for their lives to beat the visiting Wild 5-4.

“We didn’t start out very well but we were able to come back and played pretty well,” said Drew Stafford, the game’s first star. “We’re so appreciative of the fans here in Winnipeg. They come out and support us every night and they were great tonight.”

There were some nervous moments in the third period of this one as the Jets were taken to the limit by a Wild team that looked almost unbeatable the night before in a 3-0 shut out of Anaheim.

However, with the win, Winnipeg improved to 5-2-1 and moved into a third-place tie in the Central Division with St. Louis and the Wild, who fell to 5-2-1 with the loss. Nashville leads the Division with a mark of 6-1-1 while Dallas is second at 6-2-0.

While Little, Andrew Ladd and Nikolaj Ehlers scored – Ehlers goal came on a gorgeous wrist shot to the top corner — to give the Jets a 3-1 lead after the first 20 minutes, Blake Wheeler dished out two assists to become the first player in Atlanta/Winnipeg franchise history to record points in the first eight games of a season (breaking Donald Audette’s record of seven). Wheeler now leads the Jets in scoring with four goals and seven assists in eight games.

Despite allowing the early goal, Winnipeg outshot Minnesota 17-9 in the opening period.

Hutchinson foils Ryan Suter (Photo by James Carey Lauder)

In the second period, Drew Stafford scored at 51 seconds to drive Wild starting goaltender Darcy Kuemper from the game and then Stafford scored again at 4:34 on the second shot faced by Kuemper’s replacement Devan Dubnyk. Stafford scored his fourth and fifth goals of the season and took over the team’s goal-scoring lead.

Later in the period, Mikko Koivu roofed a shot from the corner past Hutchinson on a power play at 14:17 to make the score 5-2 and that gave the Wild some life. After a miscue at the Wild blueline, Minnesota came back down the ice and Minnesota’s Justin Fontaine flipped one past Hutchinson at 14:55 to make it 5-3.

That’s how the second period ended. The Jets outshot Minnesota 10-9 in the second (27-18 overall).

“We were quick, we moved the puck well, and we were efficient with our offence with pucks to the net,” said Jets head coach Paul Maurice. “We weren’t slowing down to create offense, and that crept into our game in the second period.  We slowed down, those two or three shifts in the neutral zone before we took the penalty that got them back into the game. We didn’t need to do that, it wasn’t how we were good early in the game. But the fore-check was really good and we got pucks to the net.”

The Wild came out hard against the Jets in the third period and cut the Winnipeg Lead to 5-4 with 9:19 left on the clock when Zach Parise scored from behind the Jets net, just squeezing one between Hutchinson’s legs. Suddenly it was game on.

The Jets hung in there for the next seven minutes until Dustin Byfuglien took a dumb boarding penalty, checking Jason Pominville into the boards while he was down on the ice. With 2:03 remaining in regulation, the Wild embarked on a power play (and also pulled goalie Dubnyk for a sixth attacker) and Hutchinson was brilliant. The Jets goalie shut down the Wild, who had three solid chances to score with the man advantage, and the crowd at MTS Centre rose to its feet.

Jets head coach Paul Maurice (Photo by James Carey Lauder)

What was starting to look like a Jets rout in the second period, turned into a thriller and the Jets fans seemed to love every minute of it.

The Wild, with two third-period power plays, outshot the Jets 12-6 in the third period. Winnipeg outshot Minnesota 33-30 overall. Minnesota was one-for-five on the power play while Winnipeg was 0-for-one in an oddly officiated game. The Wild had nine of their 30 shots on the power play.

“Both teams had a lot of pride and they’ll play it out to the end,” said Jets captain Andrew Ladd. “You never know and that’s why you play the full sixty minutes to see what happens. At the end of it you look at what you can shore up and get better at and the positives that you did really well.”

The Jets play again on Tuesday night when the Los Angeles Kings invade MTS Centre. It will be the fifth of game of this six-game homestand, the longest homestand of the season. The Jets are 2-1-1 in the first four games.

Posted by: Scott Taylor for RiverCitySports.com