SCHEIFELE PROPELS LATEST JETS SURGE
Winnipeg’s top two snipers enjoying red hot seasons and sharing top-player accolades
Move over, Patrik Laine. There’s a new sheriff in town, and his pistol is smoking.
Where Laine was the NHL’S Mr. November, his Winnipeg Jets’ teammate Mark Scheifele is this month’s calendar boy, creating a one-two punch not seen before in these parts.
Call it month-to-month electrification.
After Laine hit 18 targets in a dozen games last month, Scheifele has eight goals in nine games in December, including three game-winners, and all of them in overtime.
Named the NHL’S first star for the week ending Dec. 3, Scheifele was given second-star billing for the week just past, making it the third time he’s made the NHL weekly three stars list this season.
His 21 goals ranks just two behind Laine.
And while the streaky Finn gets most of the lamp-lighting attention on the Jets, it’s actually Scheifele who’s been the better goal scorer, and certainly the more clutch of the two going back to last spring’s playoffs.
Scheifele scored 14 times in 17 playoff games. He has 21 in 33 games this season. That’s 35 goals in his last 50 games. By comparison, Laine has 28 in his last 50, five in the playoffs to go along with his 23 this season.
No. 55 also has four game-winners this season to Laine’s three. The Jets now have two players on pace to score not just 50 but 60 goals.
Scheifele’s latest beat the Nhl-leading Tampa Bay Lightning 5-4 in overtime Sunday, and suddenly it’s the Jets and not the Lightning that is the hottest team in the loop: 5-0 in their last five, 9-1 in their last 10.
But it’s a fine line. Four of the Jets’ wins have come in extra time and another in a shootout.
“We’ve got some guys who are just feeling it in OT,” Nik Ehlers said after Sunday’s game. “Somebody just told me that we’ve won five OT games in a row now, and it just shows that we stick with it.”
It is five straight, the only overtime loss being 5-4 to the Edmonton Oilers on Oct. 16.
The overtime struggles of the past — Winnipeg was 9-10 last season — appear to be history.
To hear coach Paul Maurice tell it, the Jets have begun to relish sudden-death, a realization that might have dawned on the coach in Friday’s 4-3 overtime win in Chicago.
“We gave up a goal with seven seconds left,” Maurice said. “And at no point on the bench did you ever feel the weight of it, (that) we let that game slip away. We’ll just go win it in overtime. There’s lots of confidence in our room and on the bench, that overtime’s a good place.”
Nobody thinks it’s a better place right now than Scheifele.
Neither the Jets nor Lightning were thrilled with all the chances they gave up in Sunday’s track meet which ended in the Jets’ favour.
“We’re not looking to run and gun with that team,” Maurice said. “I think we were sitting fourth in goals against per game. That’s a quiet strength of ours. We can be a real good defensive team. To be a real good defensive team you have to skate very well.”
The Jets are tied for sixth in goals-against-average, but Maurice’s point is well taken: few think of Winnipeg as a stingy team defensively.
The coach didn’t think his team had the legs to play its best defensive game on Sunday, given it was their fourth in six days.
The one line Maurice thought was particularly rock-solid defensively was Adam Lowry’s.
“They were great again,” Maurice said. “Physical. And that’s as tough a line as you’re going to find in the NHL to shut down. They were great. Morrissey and Trouba, again, were really, really good in that department.”
Over on the other side, Tampa blueliner Ryan Mcdonagh called it sloppy.
“It’s two teams that were neck and neck. One point, you look up and it’s 4-4 and 31 shots apiece,” Mcdonagh said. “I thought it was a sloppier game for two teams that are pretty high in the standings, as far as puck management.”
Maurice acknowledged the five-game streak his team is on comes as a bit of a surprise.
“I was listening to Jon (Cooper, Lightning coach) talk last week about schedule losses,” Maurice began. “Where it just sits on your schedule, it’s coming and (you know) that’s going to be a real tough game for you to win. And our last two have been that, very difficult to win. And we’ve found a way.
“Which is, I guess, is another cliché for, ‘You just compete as long and as hard as you possibly can and good things will happen.’ ”
The Jets played three games in four days, with travel, Thursday through Sunday. Blake Wheeler, in particular, looked like he’d just run a marathon.
Once again, Wheeler and Scheifele played a good chunk of the overtime, something Maurice hinted might not be sustainable. “They have incredible recovery,” the coach said.
“Anybody’s tired after 40 seconds in an overtime, back on the bench. They’re both kind of checking their shoulders to see if they’re going back out right away. Those two guys have just been dominant. I’m playing them more than I’d probably like to. But it’s working.”