Jets’ Laine battling confidence issues

FOUR-GAME SLUMP

PAUL FRIESEN WINNIPEG • It’s too early to call it the sophomore slump, but Winnipeg Je ts star Patrik Laine is certainly going through a crisis of confidence.

Going into Thursday’s home game against Dallas, the 19-year-old hasn’t registered a point in his last four games.

Worse, he doesn’t think he’s doing much of anything to help his team.

“I feel like I can’t do many positive things on the ice,” Laine said Thursday. “The team is winning, so that’s always good. But it would be nice to be able to help the team to win sometimes, because I haven’t done that.

“Feels like hockey is really hard right now. It doesn’t matter if it’s offensively or defensively. Obviously, I don’t have a lot of confidence.”

In 11 games, Laine has four goals and two assists. That’s just two goals and two points off the pace he set in his first 11 last season, when he finished with a team-leading 26 goals.

“It’s hard. But it was hard last year also,” he said. “Right now, I don’t know why, but it feels like it’s just super-hard to score. Hopefully, it will get better. It’s not going to get easier, I know that. But hopefully, I can find the back of the net a couple times.”

The visiting Stars might just be the tonic he needs.

In five games against Dallas last season, Laine scored eight times, including a pair of hat tricks on home ice.

“That’s what we said,” linemate Nik Ehlers said. “Hopefully, something good can come out of tonight. This league is not easy. You’re going to run into some hard times. And Patty’s a good enough player to get out of it. It’s just a matter of time.”

Captain Blake Wheeler agrees.

“What’s impressed me the most is he’s not pressing, he’s not trying to go off the reservation to try to score goals to do his own thing,” Wheeler said. “We’ve seen it — he needs one or two and he’s gonna put it in the net. There’s nothing wrong, it just a matter of our group is more focused on winning than individuals trying to score goals.”

Head coach Paul Maurice said Laine is no different than the rest of the team’s young players. Some nights they’re good, others they’re not. “Confidence is a really interesting one to get your head around,” Maurice said.