Jets drop hard-fought decision to Nashville Predators

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The Winnipeg Jets got here residence from their longest highway journey of the season with a shedding report after dropping a hard-fought resolution in Nashville, Tuesday.

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Pierre-Luc Dubois scored within the first minute however Winnipeg’s offence went dry over the following 59 because the Jets dropped a 2-1 resolution to the Predators, coming residence with a 2-3 mark on the journey.

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“It’s disappointing going 2-3,” Dubois mentioned. “We wish to hold constructing that hole between us and different groups. This highway journey appears like a little bit of a slide down. However there’s lots of hockey left and we will play higher, and we all know it.”

The Jets fall to 31-17-1 on the season, 12-4 within the Central, and miss an opportunity to re-gain high spot within the division, held by Dallas.

Tanner Jeannot broke a 1-1 tie with a wrap-around purpose some 5 minutes into the third interval because the Predators avenged a 2-1 extra time defeat in Winnipeg earlier this season.

The rivals ended the sport with a scrum, Dubois closely concerned, as he was all night time.

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The Jets pressed with their internet empty over the past two minutes, Mark Scheifele and Nik Ehlers ringing pictures off the iron.

“There’s lots of issues that may change the course of a sport,” Dubois mentioned. “I’d say two posts within the final minute and a half, it’s a fairly large game-changer.”

The Jets could have misplaced greater than the sport, as star defenceman Josh Morrissey crashed into the facet boards within the last minute, showing to harm his hand or wrist. There was no fast phrase on the extent of it.

In a sport between the 2 Central all-star goalies, Juuse Saros out-gunned Connor Hellebuyck, shutting the door on the Jets’ greatest shooters and irritating a slumping Adam Lowry, specifically, on a few point-blank probabilities.

Lowry has gone 22 video games with no purpose.

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“We additionally handed up lots of probabilities to shoot and we had some odd-man rushes in that second interval that we didn’t make the most of,” Jets head coach Rick Bowness mentioned. “The alternatives to place extra pucks on the web have been there.”

Not that Hellebuyck was shabby. He confronted extra pictures – Nashville out-shot the Jets, 41-33 – and stored the deficit to at least one by means of some Grade-A probabilities within the third interval.

“I feel he’s one of the best goalie within the NHL,” Dubois mentioned. “You hate to say you anticipate it from him, however he performs rather a lot, rather a lot, lots of good video games. And he’s been extraordinarily essential to us this season and might be till the top.”

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Winnipeg has performed eight of its final 9 video games on the highway, recording a 4-4 mark over that stretch.

Dubois didn’t come proper out and say fatigue had turn out to be an element, however he had a straightforward time rattling off his staff’s difficult schedule of late.

“We’re on the highway for every week, come again for one sport, again on the highway for eight days, 16 video games in 28 days in December, 15 in 30 in January – it’s lots of hockey.”

Bowness wished no a part of the fatigue-factor storyline.

“That’s no excuse,” Bowness mentioned. “We performed exhausting, for probably the most half, and simply let up after we shouldn’t have and so they didn’t. Their goalie made some large saves for him, our goalie made some large saves for us. It definitely wasn’t a 2-1 sport by way of offensive alternatives for both staff. However each goalies have been excellent.”

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The Jets couldn’t have requested for a greater begin, Cole Perfetti establishing Dubois for his twenty first purpose of the season, simply 48 seconds in.

The place Winnipeg had a determined edge over the primary 20 minutes, Nashville flipped the script within the second, ultimately tying the sport on Winnipegger Cody Glass’s deflection, his sixth purpose of the season.

“We had some two-on-ones and three-on-twos the place we have been making an attempt to make performs that weren’t there and we slowed up on the frenzy, which allowed their again checkers to get again,” Bowness mentioned. “Yeah, the depth dropped off just a little bit within the second interval.”

Defenceman Logan Stanley returned to the Jets lineup after one other 22-game harm absence and made a right away impression, crushing Glass on the Nashville blue line on his first shift.

Clear because the hit was, Preds D-man Alexandre Provider – all 5-foot-11, 174 kilos of him – took it upon himself to tackle the 6-foot-7, 228-pound Stanley in a scrap. He survived.

“He did his job,” Bowness mentioned. “We wish that massive, bodily presence again there and he definitely gave us that proper off the bat.”

The Jets return residence for 3 video games earlier than the all-star break, starting with Buffalo on Thursday.