Following a lackluster 4-1 loss to the Calgary Flames in Game 1 of their best-of-five qualifying series with the Flames, Jets head coach Paul Maurice did not hold back when asked his thoughts on the play that ended Mark Scheifele’s night just over five minutes into the contest after a collision with Flames forward Matthew Tkachuk.

Mark Scheifele to the locker room early in Game 1. Brutal looking leg injury pic.twitter.com/GsPJfs3qmU

— Brady Trettenero (@BradyTrett) August 2, 2020

“It was intentional. It was a filthy, dirty kick to the back of the leg,” Maurice said.

“You can’t see it on the program feed, but take the blue line feed and you zoom in. He went after the back of his leg, could have cut his Achilles. Could have ended the man’s career, it’s an absolutely filthy disgusting hit.”

With the style of play Tkachuk plays on a nightly basis, there’s always a closer eye kept on the 22-year old than maybe some of the other players in the league.

Knowing the game that Tkachuk plays, it’s understandable to see Maurice’s positioning behind thinking it was an intentional action by Tkachuk.

However, to no surprise, Tkachuk sees things differently than Maurice does.

“No, absolutely not. I’m backchecking on him and it’s such an accident. I felt terrible from the result of it, I remember he was turning away and I just went in and my left skate had a little bit of the speed wobbles and I was kind of moving probably too fast for myself and was going down,” said Tkachuk.

“I feel terrible, he’s a top player in the NHL and someone I’ve come to know in the past few summers. Last couple of summers ago, training with Gary Roberts and such a great guy and just a top player in the league. It’s not good for the game when someone like that isn’t in the game. It was very unfortunate, and unlucky and such an accident, I feel terrible about it. I don’t feel good about it and hope he’s okay.”

Tkachuk also claims that he did not feel his skate make any contact with Scheifele’s leg at any point during the collision.

“No, I didn’t feel any contact with my skate on his leg at all, but I did feel most of my body weight and most of my power, when he turned, went in and it looked like his left leg got caught there,” Tkachuk added.

“At no point did I feel my skate touch him.”

Like Tkachuk, Flames head coach Geoff Ward also sang a different tune than that of Maurice.

“To me, it looked like Mark decided to turn and Chucky (Tkachuk) was trying to turn with him. I think he lost his balance a little bit and got caught in a compromised position. What (Maurice is) saying? I didn’t see that,” said Ward.

Tkachuk wasn’t penalized on the play on a night where special teams was a sour spot for the Jets. As much as Maurice would have liked the opportunity to jump on the man advantage, with the nature and the speed of the incident, he wasn’t expecting the referees to catch what he saw.

“I don’t expect the referees to find that one, that one happens, they wouldn’t be looking at it,” said Maurice. “You got to look at it after and it’s grotesque.”

Losing Scheifele so early in the game had a domino effect on the Jets lineup, especially on the power play and on a night where special teams play was the difference in the contest.

The Jets were 0-7 on the power play and had just four shots on the man advantage. They allowed two Flames power play tallies and a shorthanded goal.

“We struggled, there’s no doubt about it. I thought we were fine for a while, but we got under the special teams where Marks a key piece and we’ve spent years with that setup and certainly worked on it quite a bit these last three weeks,” said Maurice. “So struggled, special teams especially.”

Without Scheifele on their top power play unit the Jets had issues finding any rhythm. The simple things like getting the puck through the neutral zone and past the blue line were nearly nonexistent without Scheifele—who was third on the team in power play points this season—in the game, something the Jets top center excels at.

“I thought we battled hard through our first—like I said when you get into special teams, you get into the power play and they give one up, give up a shortly, I mean our entries were really, really poor tonight and he’s (Scheifele) the driver of our entries for sure. It had a major impact, without a doubt,” said Maurice.

In the rare times the Jets were able to get the puck into the Flames zone on their seven power play opportunities, shots were hard to come by.

Part of their issues were the Flames making life tough on them, part of that was losing Scheifele and then later in the game Patrik Laine.

“We didn’t have any shots because we didn’t spend any time in their end of the ice. We couldn’t get any entries and couldn’t get any possession time,” said Maurice. “It started there and we lost Patty (Laine) for the last two. We had our challenges out there tonight for sure.”

As much of a challenge Saturday night was for the Jets, they know if they clean up their game on the power play and continue what they did five-on-five, they’ll be just fine.

Knowing that they can play better than they did Saturday night, Blake Wheeler is looking at that as a positive, coming out of an ugly loss.

“We didn’t play very well, we can play better than that, that’s a positive. We come out and play our brand of hockey that’s suited to us and clean up our special teams a little bit,” said Wheeler

“They didn’t do anything five-on-five. They scored twice on the power play and once shorthanded. Do a little bit of a better job on special teams and build a little bit more simplicity to our game five-on-five and that’s it, it’s one game.”

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