Winnipeg Jets coach Scott Arniel didn’t want to talk about his opponent.
When a question was prefaced with, “the Blues were talking about,” Arniel snapped.
“I don’t care what the Blues talk about,” he told reporters after his team lost 5-2 to the St. Louis Blues, forcing a Game 7. “This is the Winnipeg Jets. We have a style of play that we have to play. We got to it for about 30 minutes and we dropped off big time.”
Winnipeg surrendered four unanswered goals in just short of five and a half minutes. It was a chain of events we had seen before — particularly in Game 4 — and from the outside looking in, the knee-jerk reaction is to blame Connor Hellebuyck.
“This isn’t about Connor,” Arniel said. “Tonight was not about Connor. Tonight, we imploded in front of him.”
Well, two things can be true.
There’s no doubt the Jets did Hellebuyck no favours — be it via poor line changes, missed assignments and, yet again, too much net front traffic. And the Blues pounced.
“We utilized our speed and our physicality,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery told reporters. “I thought we were able to be physical down low, we were able to skate with some speed through the neutral zone and we were really committed to getting to the net front again. Those first couple of goals, they’re really good screen goals.”
But let’s also face the facts: Hellebuyck has been pulled in every road game this series for a reason. He hasn’t been very good.
We can talk about systems, breakdowns and all the other things that factor into a goaltender’s performance in the playoffs but the bottom-line is, it’s games like these where someone like Hellebuyck — coming off a regular season where he was nominated for both the Hart and Vezina Trophy — needs to deliver.
When you’re a player that is showered with “M—V—P” chants in your own barn, there’s an expectation that you can steal games. When your top-six is without Mark Scheifele — not to mention that Gabriel Vilardi and Nikolaj Ehlers are hardly 100 per cent healthy — you’ve got to grind out a 2-1 win. Besides, that’s what this team strives for every night, right?
Sure, in this type of game, especially, there’s even more of an onus on the Jets’ defencemen to win net front battles. But it’s a double-edged sword — Hellebuyck is equally, if not more, responsible to take his game to the next level. And he’s done the opposite of that in these playoffs.
In six playoff games, Hellebuyck has posted an .815 save percentage and a 4.42 goals against average. Save percentages usually dwindle this time of year — Andrei Vasilevskiy has also sported a sub-.900 save percentage over the last three playoffs — but that’s teetering around unplayable territory.
If he doesn’t rebound in Game 7, this series is over.
“Now it’s a one-game showdown. It’s our goalie against their goalie,” Arniel said.
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Stoller Says
• Ehlers may not be at 100 per cent but he still managed to have a palpable impact. Ehlers played some of his best hockey alongside Adam Lowry during the regular season and alongside Cole Perfetti, the Jets makeshift second line outchanced St. Louis 9-2. Whether Scheifele plays in Game 7 or not, I’d be curious to see if Arniel keeps that second line in-tact. Secondary scoring has been hard to come by this series.
• Speaking of Ehlers, his return to the power play certainly gave the top unit a jolt. He may have not been wheeling around and flying by guys but Ehlers made several sharp plays that kept the Blues PK on their toes — which we haven’t seen a lot of throughout this series.
• Perfetti deserves his flowers. Not only did he (literally) bat home a power play goal but all series long, the 23-year-old hasn’t cratered in any of these tight-checking games. Is there another level for him to get to? For sure. But what we’ve seen from Perfetti in these playoffs is indicative of his season-long growth.
