Comrie Records His First Shutout of the Season as Jets Whip Carolina 3-0

COMRIE SUPERB AS JETS WIN SEVENTH STRAIGHT

For Winnipeg Jets head coach Scott Arniel, it was almost a perfect hockey game. For Jets backup goaltender Eric Comrie it was absolute perfection.

Comrie made 28 saves to earn his first shutout of the season as the Jets beat the Carolina Hurricanes 3-0 to win their seventh straight game and remain first overall in the National Hockey League.

The star-studded Hurricanes came into Winnipeg as betting-line favourites and despite being the second-place team in the Eastern Conference looked quite ordinary against a Jets team that has put up some amazing numbers in the last fortnight.

1. The Jets are now 38-14-3, first in the NHL and first in the Western Conference by nine points.

2. They improved to 29-0-1 when leading after the second period and are the last remaining team in the NHL that has yet to lose when leading after any intermission.

3. They held their opponent to fewer than 30 shots for the 16th straight game.

4. They are 10-2-0 in their last 12 games.

5. They are first overall in goals scored (198) in the NHL and third best in goals allowed (131).

They earned their league-leading 21st win at home and are a league best 21-5-3 at Canada Life Centre.
They are now one of five teams in the past 20 years to have three seven-game winning streaks in a single season.

This was a game the Jets controlled from the opening faceoff. They dictated the pace and really didn’t give Carolina more than a handful of decent scoring chances. It was a also a game in which all the scoring came from the second and fourth lines.

In the first period, the Jets had a number of early opportunities to score but Carolina netminder Pyotr Kochetov was very sharp.

The Hurricanes, meanwhile, had a power-play goal disallowed due to goaltender interference and it appeared as if we’d go to the intermission scoreless, but on the power play at 19:18, Winnipeg’s Nino Niederreiter ripped a shot past Kochetov and the home side had a 1-0 lead.

Alex Iafallo and Vladislav Namestnikov drew the assists, but it was Iafallo who -- looking like Guy Lafleur -- stickhandled through three flailing Hurricanes to make the perfect pass to a wide-open Niederreiter. The Jets outshot Carolina 12-8 during the first period as Comrie was rock solid.

The Jets took a 2-0 lead on the power play at 3:13 of the second period when Neal Pionk took a tip pass from Cole Perfetti, cruised in from the point and blasted a slapper over Kochetov’s glove from 20 feet out. It was Pionk’s eighth of the year as Perfetti and Niederreiter drew the assists.

The Hurricanes outshot the Jets 12-6 in the second period, but once again, Comrie was calm, collected and steady in the Jets net and after 40 minutes, Winnipeg led 2-0.

The Jets and Hurricanes were quite evenly matched for the first 14 minutes of the third period, but in the final six minutes, the Jets had complete control. They even had a goal disallowed when Namestnikov was deemed to have kicked the puck past Kochetov at the 14 minute mark.

Then, at 16:19, Rasmus Kupari scored to give the Jets a 3-0 lead, but it was immediately called off by referee Trevor Hanson -- for reasons known only to Hanson. It might have been the worst call in hockey history (like, it was really, really terrible), but Jets head coach Scott Arniel challenged the call immediately. Not surprisingly, it didn’t take long for the officials to come back and call it a good goal.

It was Kupari’s fifth of the year as Mason Appleton and David Gustafsson drew the assists. It also put the game away.

The Jets outshot Carolina 12-9 in the third period and 30-29 overall. Winnipeg went two-for-four on the power play while Carolina was zero-for two. The Jets outhit Carolina 24-13, but the Hurricanes won a whopping 64.5 per cent of the faceoffs.

The three stars were Comrie, Niederreiter and Pionk. Niederreiter had the best line of the night with a goal and an assist, five shots, two hits and two blocked shots in 17:33 of total ice time.

Perhaps it was also interesting that the Jets won their fifth straight game since an injury to captain Adam Lowry. With Lowry out of the lineup, the rest of the Jets have stepped up and outscored the opposition 23-9.

The Jets will get a chance to extend the winning streak to eight on Friday. Night when the red-hot New York Islanders visit Canada Life Centre for a 7 p.m. start.