JETS HAVE FAITH HELLEBUYCK WILL DELIVER IN GAME 7
Young goaltender rarely loses two games in a row and is having a great post-season
They’re on the right side of a trend of punching and counterpunching that has been going on all series, they’ve proven they can win in Nashville and they’re still just a win away from reaching the Western Conference final.
You might say the Winnipeg Jets — though they have never played a winner-take-all deciding game as a franchise — have plenty of reasons to feel confident going into Game 7 of their series with the Predators.
There’s one reason that trumps them all — goaltender Connor Hellebuyck.
“We have all the faith in the world there,” centre Paul Stastny said Tuesday, a day after the Jets lost 4-0 to the Predators in Game 6 at Bell MTS Place.
“He’s just calm. He doesn’t get too high, too low. Sometimes if there’s a bad goal that goes in, you know he’s going to bounce back and make a couple stops after that.”
Hellebuyck has been solid in the series, though he was outplayed by Pekka Rinne of the Predators in Game 6.
With a goals-against average of 2.67 and a save percentage of .921 through six games, Hellebuyck has proven he can get the job done. Even better has been his performance in games after a loss in the playoffs. He’s 3-0 with a GAA of 2.00 and a save percentage of .940.
Considering no team has won two games in a row in this series and the trend says it’s the Jets’ turn on Thursday night at Bridgestone Arena, those are encouraging numbers.
“You have a game where you’re pulled in the first round … that doesn’t faze him, he’s on to the next day,” Jets coach Paul Maurice said. “An important part of being a good pro is just turning that page — good and bad — and getting onto the next day.”
Hellebuyck was asked Tuesday how he prepares for a Game 7, a situation he has never been in at the NHL level.
“Same way as every other game,” he said.
Hellebuyck said his biggest games before this one were probably a pair of Hockey East Championships when he was at the University of MassachusettsLowell.
And how did he do in those games?
“I have yet to be scored on in one, so I like those odds,” he said.
“This has nothing to do with that. This is whole new level and you’ve just got to get into the game as much as you can. I say that because you’re going to be feeling adrenalin, you’re going to be excited to play and you’ve got to embrace it.”
LATE STARTS A FACTOR?
It has clearly been nagging at Maurice since last Thursday. There was something very different about the last three games of this Jets-Predators series — the games were slower, more poorly played and had less action — and he was trying to put his finger on it.
“That 8:30 (start) was the one that’s changed that’s clearly different,” Maurice said.
Games 4, 5 and 6 were all 8:30 CT starts, two in Winnipeg and one in Nashville.
The Preds won 2-1 in Game 4, the Jets 6-2 in Game 5 and the Preds again 4-0 in Game 6. The road team won every time.
“Does it make any sense?” Maurice asked.
“I might be 100 per cent wrong. You’d think it would favour the home team. They go home, stay in a routine. You would think that. Staying around in a hotel room for an extra hour and a half is never something that you want to do.”
PICK UP NIK
Stastny has a message for teammate Nikolaj Ehlers, who has been fighting the puck throughout the playoffs and has yet to score a goal in 11 games.
“Yeah, sometimes less is more,” Stastny said. “I think he’s struggling maybe scoring-wise, but there’s times where he’s playing well and it’s just not going in for him.”
The beauty of the situation is that Ehlers, like every other player, still has a chance to make an impact in this series by coming up with a great play or a big goal in Game 7.
“It’s all about one game, it’s all about the next game,” Stastny said. “What happened previous 10, 11 playoff games doesn’t matter. Whether it’s him, whether it’s a top guy, whether it’s a bottom guy, it’s a team game here and we all want to do anything we can to help the team win.”
POWER OUTAGE
The Jets went 0-for-4 on the power play Monday night and it cost them big time in what turned out to be a 4-0 loss. The Jets had only four shots on goal and two high-danger scoring chances that were turned aside by Rinne.
The biggest challenge was just getting possession of the puck in the offensive zone.
“They put a lot of pressure on us and we weren’t really able to get anything going,” Jets winger Mathieu Perreault said. “We’ll look at that, for sure, and try and be better. But this power play has been great all year, so I’m not worried at all.”