With another white-clad full house at Bell MTS Place screaming loudly, the Jets blew a 2-0 lead in the third period and fell 3-2 to the St. Louis Blues.
Jaden Schwartz scored the winning goal with 15 seconds left in regulation time as an absolutely shocked crowd went home disappointed again.
With the win, the Blues took a 3-2 lead in the Stanley Cup Division Series and will head home with a chance to wrap up the series on Saturday night. However, every game in this series has been won by the road team.
“This is no different than being down 0-2,” said Jets captain Blake Wheeler. “We have to go to St. Louis and win a hockey game. We did a lot of good things in St. Louis. We wore them down. But playoffs are a funny thing. Momentum can swing in a heartbeat.”
It certainly did on Thursday night.
The Jets struck quickly. Adam Lowry banged home the rebound off a dead-angle shot by Brandon Tanev to give Winnipeg a 1-0 lead at the 12-second mark.
However, after Lowry scored the opening goal, the Blues stormed back. Jets netminder Connor Hellebuyck had to stop breakaways and countless St. Louis opportunities in close before big Kevin Hayes gave the Jets a two-goal lead.
Hayes went wide down the right wing on Brandon’s own Joel Edmundson, cut hard in front, took a shot at Binnington and then jammed home the rebound. Dustin Byfuglien had the only assist on Hayes' second goal of the playoffs and the Jets were up 2-0.
Sadly, it was one of the last times all night that the Jets went really hard to the net.
St. Louis outshot Winnipeg 15-12 in the first period, but Hellebuyck was simply too good.
In the second period, the Jets had a number of chances to blow the game wide open, but they couldn’t take advantage of the opportunities.
In fact, Winnipeg had a four-minute power play after a double-minor to Robert Thomas for high-sticking, both Nikolaj Ehlers and Kevin Hayes had clear cut breakaways on Binnington and Hayes had Binnington beaten on a scramble in front, but deflected the puck off the goal line with his own stick. Despite all those chances, the Jets couldn’t put the game away.
In the end, the second period was scoreless as the Jets outshot the Blues 10-6. St. Louis had a couple of great chances, but again, Hellebuyck was too good.
In the third, the Blues made it 2-1 on a power play goal (off a chintzy, gutless, makeup call against Jacob Trouba) by Ryan O’Reilly and that changed everything.
“Obviously the power play goal hurt us,” said Wheeler. “We would have liked to have killed that one off. From there, they had the monentum for the rest of the game.”
From that point on, the Blues looked like a team playing with urgency while the Jets spent too much time hanging back and waiting for St. Louis to come to them.
The Blues tied the game on a rush from the corner with about six minutes to play even though the net was off its moorings. Oskar Sundqvist drove to the net and was taken out of the play and into the corner of the net. The puck deflected off Hellebuyck right onto the stick of Brayden Schenn who banged it into the net with the goal flying off its moorings into the corner.
The officials talked to Toronto and it was determined Schenn would have scored if the goal had not been knocked off its posts. Rule 63.6.
St. Louis eventually won it with 15 seconds left as the Jets just couldn’t clear the puck in their own zone and Jaden Schwartz deflected a pass from Tyler Bozak past Hellebuyck to seal the deal.
It was a devastating loss for a Jets team that led 2-0 with 20 minutes to play and for the fourth time in 2019, lost a game in the final minute.
The Jets won every major statistical battle in this one, but they couldn’t win the game. They outshot St. Louis 31-29, won 51 per cent of the faceoffs and outhit the Blues 24-14. But they gave up three goals in the third period and now their collective backs are against the wall.
Game 6 will be played in St. Louis on Saturday night at 6 p.m.
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