The crowd was there, there was half price food and beer and there was a team of players who had been saying all the right things in their shortened training camp but it appears engine trouble is already affecting the Winnipeg Jets.
The game started well for the home team when on the first power play Dustin Byfuglien scored the opening goal the game on a bullet one-timer from the left point as defense partner Enstrom fed him the soft pass. The crowd came alive and the Jets seemed to as well for the short term.
It didn’t take long before Ottawa came back and tied the game up but in the ten minutes between goals the Senators started controlling the play. The Jets had their chances but it seems they could never quite get anything going and each power play was more anemic than the one before. At one point I had to tweet out that the Jets killed their own PP and it was met with good response.
Where the issues lay as the game wore on were connecting passes and zone entries for the home team. At times they Jets had trouble getting out of their own end. The much hyped second line of Kane, Jokinen and Wellwood had trouble finding any chemistry and I point the finger at Kane, at least for today.
Kane did himself and his team mates no favours by skating backwards up the wing hovering about 20 feet in front of his defense man, usually Ron Hainsey. If he is to live up to his contract making mistakes that kids in Peewee don’t do is not going to cut it. Kane is a power forward in the making and he needs the puck as he is skating hard and while he may have deserved it at times he was rarely in a position to succeed.
Early in the first Kane took a pass as he went up his off-wing and rather than do what everyone expected, including the defenseman covering him Chris Phillips, he cut to the middle and split the pair and got a shot off challenging Anderson. Exactly what he needs to do but that was the last solid rush the home fans would see from Kane.
Little Ladd and Wheeler, the Jets top line, had no success either as they failed to connect or take off, just another example of engine trouble. The same could be said for Ponikarovsky, Antropov and Burmistrov, although the latter had to be considered one of the best Jets today as he went 73% in the face off circle.
Where the trouble lay was in the second pairing defense. Hainsey and Stuart are not the same caliber as Hainsey Bogosian and missing the young defender affects the movement of the puck up to the second line.
Olli Jokinen, although 64% in the dot, was seen mainly as a disappointment by most fans and at times seemed to labour up and down the ice with little jump in his step.
Byfuglien was easily the best Jet both as defender and perhaps forward as he had two solid rushes that although resulted in nothing were some of the best offensive effort shown from the home guys.
By the numbers:
PK 50%
PP 16.6%
Out shot 2 of 3 periods
.892 Pavelec save %
My own stat to track tonight was board battles. Last season I found the Jets were far too ineffective in battles along the boards. Tonight in 43 counts I had the Jets winnig 26 to 17. Obviously there was little to show for it and that’s where the rust comes in to play for the home team.
For a group that had trouble assembling a consistent run last season it was probably too much to hope for a cohesive group after a week of training camp. However, even the most cynical fan would have had trouble predicting the lack of timing, positioning and awareness amongst so many Jets’ players.
As Stuart said post game, “we can’t afford to lose two games in a row,” and while that is true much has to change to prevent that reality from happening.
Winnipeg Jets Blogger •Winnipeg Jets Writer • 
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