Jets eliminated from postseason in 6-3 defeat to avalanche
It will be a long summer for the Winnipeg Jets.
The 2023-24 season and post-season are over and once again, the Jets weren’t good enough.
This time, the Colorado Avalanche were simply too much. The Avs were faster, quicker and tougher and now the Jets brain trust will have to spend another long off-season trying to figure out how to compete with those teams that truly can be considered the game’s best.
Tuesday night at Canada Life Centre, the Jets scored first and then watched as the Avalanche played like a team that was destined to win the series. They didn’t do much, but they did enough to end the Jets 2023-24 dream with a 6-3 victory, becoming the fourth team in NHL history to score at least five goals in each of their first five games of the post-season.
It should have been different. This Jets team, a team that had beaten Colorado all three times during the regular season, couldn’t get a break and couldn’t muster enough offence to beat an opponent that played inspired hockey in Games 2, 3 and 4. Their William Jennings Trophy-winning goaltender couldn’t steal a game for them, their big scorers didn’t score and the defence couldn’t corral the likes of Nathan MacKinnon, Valeri Nichushkin and Mikko Rantanen.
Oh, the Jets were definitely better in Game 5 at home, but the Avs had too much momentum and too much speed to give up an impressive three-game win streak of their own.
In the end, Colorado simply had a better hockey team.
Winnipeg opened the scoring at 1:15 of the first period on a fluke. With the Colorado net empty and the puck in the crease, when defenceman Josh Manson fired a clearing pass off the leg of teammate Artturi Lehkonen and puck went right to the back of the net. Kyle Connor got credit for the goal, his third of the playoffs, but it just seemed to piss off the Avs.
Colorado scored two minutes later as Valeri Nichushkin ripped one passed Connor Hellebuyck from the right circle. It was Nichushkin’s seventh goal of the series.
Colorado outshot Winnipeg 13-7 but didn’t dominate the period by any stretch. The difference was, the Avs shot the puck while the Jets just played around with it. Combine the Jets failure to shoot with the fact that Colorado doesn’t hesitate and the Avs had themselves a 1-1 tie at the end of what might have been their weakest period of the series.
In the second period, the Jets might have played their best 20-minute stretch in the series and yet came out of it down 3-2. They outshot Colorado 19-11 and should have been in complete control, but two horrible mistakes and some spineless officiating left the Jets looking up at a one-goal deficit heading into what would be the final period of the post-season.
Colorado’s Yakov Trenin scored at 5:42 of the second to give the Avs a 2-1 lead, but Josh Morrissey scored on a rocket from the point on the power play to tie it up. Mark Scheifele and Gabriel Vilardi drew the assists and the Jets suddenly had some jump.
They controlled the rest of the period and outshot Colorado 7-3 late as they continued to pepper Avs goalie Alexandar Georgiev. But Georgiev barred the door until Artturi Lehkonen scored his fifth of the playoffs on a dump from the point to the corner. That’s right, the puck was simply fired into the corner when it hit Neil Pionk’s stick in front and was redirected into the empty net. It was the kind of fluke goal that can break a team, especially one that’s already fragile.
The Jets trailed 3-2 after 40 minutes and there was no real reason for it. A lack of puck-luck -- something that had hurt them for stretches during the season -- was killing the Jets again.
Early in the third period, the Jets thrilled the raucous white-clad faithful when Tyler Toffoli blasted a wrist shot passed a startled Georgiev and suddenly the Jets had drawn even. There appeared to be hope.
However, the celebration would be short-lived.
Mikko Rantanen scored his first of the playoffs at 4:11 and then Rantanen took a gorgeous pass from MacKinnon and ripped it past Hellebuyck at 8:01 to put the game and the series away. Josh Manson scored into an empty net at 19:58 of the third but at that point, only Manson cared.
The Jets outshot Colorado 11-8 in the third and 36-32 overall, but nobody cared about that, either.
The final 12 minutes were tough for everybody in the downtown barn, but be certain, no one took it harder than the Jets players themselves. On this night, they had played well enough to win, but they didn’t and for the second straight year, they were out of the playoffs in five games.
Fact is, they simply weren’t good enough and there really isn’t much more to say.
For the Winnipeg Jets, it’s going to be another long summer.
Comments