Four key takeaways from Winnipeg Jets' stunning season-opening win over Oilers

By / / Sports / 10 minutes of reading


EDMONTON — Connor Hellebuyck’s voice wobbled momentarily, then caught itself in time to talk about the people who matter most to him.

“It’s been tough on the whole family but the boys played great for me, and they’ve been really supportive this entire time,” Hellebuyck said at Rogers Place in Edmonton following the Winnipeg Jets’ season-opening 6-0 win. “I really cherish these moments, and I cherish my time with family, so hope they’re doing all right.”

Hellebuyck missed Monday’s practice, departing Winnipeg to be with his loved ones during an undisclosed but clearly important family matter. He returned to Winnipeg on Tuesday, just in time to have a limited practice after the Jets’ main group was done for the day. He was a full participant in Wednesday’s morning skate, however, and took care of his teammates to the tune of a 30-save shutout against the reigning Western Conference champions.

From long before the opening faceoff, Hellebuyck’s teammates did their part to take care of him.

“When he got back from the airport yesterday, I think everyone kind of had a little moment with him,” said Jets captain Adam Lowry, who scored Winnipeg’s first goal and added an assist. “Just to check in on him. Make sure he’s doing OK. Make sure (his wife) Andrea’s doing OK. I think that’s one of the great things about playing in those smaller markets — it’s a tight-knit community. In turn, it makes us a tight-knit team.”

Hellebuyck’s family matter was one of a few items that gave the Jets’ season opener extra emotional importance. Head coach Scott Arniel had already won 15 games behind the Jets bench, but those were accumulated while Arniel wore the “interim” label; his predecessor and mentor, Rick Bowness, missed 25 games over the course of two seasons. This time, after spending more than a decade working to re-establish himself as an NHL head coach, Arniel’s win came with that interim tag removed. It’s a milestone that neither Arniel nor his players took lightly.

“We’re really excited for Arnie,” Lowry said. “We knew it was going to look like, with him kind of having the interim tag last year at certain points when Bones was away. To see him come in, I feel he’s put his own unique stamp on the team.”

“They deserve it,” Hellebuyck said of Arniel and the Jets’ full coaching staff. “They work so hard, and I put a lot of hours in, so you can see things like this. It’s, you know, it’s just an honour to be part of (his first win).”

Winnipeg’s first game of the season taught us about more than the team’s feelings of closeness. The Jets went toe-to-toe with the Stanley Cup favourites and kept Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and company on their back foot.

Here are the most important takeaways from Winnipeg’s season-opening win.

1. Why Lowry’s line starts games — it goes well beyond matchups

On the first shift of the season, Lowry won the game’s opening faceoff, leading to a dump into Edmonton’s zone. Mason Appleton got a jump on the forecheck, laying a hit on Ty Emberson as Nino Niederreiter took away Emberson’s outlet. The puck headed up the left wing boards as if to clear but Lowry was there, tracking back, playing his role as the Jets’ third forward to positional perfection. It was a textbook start to a game that needed a textbook start; despite the 6-0 scoreline, the Oilers are an obvious threat.

“Those guys are going to play the right way (and) get you off to a good start,” Arniel said, “In the sense that they’re going to run into people. Those three play heavy, play hard. So it just kind of gets the rest of the group on board and recognizing how they have to go as well.”

In short, Lowry’s line is the standard bearer. If you ever want to understand how the Jets are meant to forecheck, backcheck or defend their own zone, Lowry’s line is the one you should study. By starting them against the Oilers, Arniel established the Jets’ style of play for the entire team. Lowry’s line generated offensive zone time — the meaningful kind, with genuine threats to score — on multiple shifts before they opened the scoring.

“They can do it all. They just proved that tonight,” Hellebuyck said of Lowry, Niederreiter and Appleton. “The sky’s the limit for them. When they’re clicking and chemistry is going they can have multiple sides of their game, and it’s fun to watch.”

Appleton is a player whose ice time often gets singled out as a coaching critique. It seems strange to some that Lowry’s line is the Jets’ de facto second line — not Cole Perfetti, Vladislav Namestnikov and Nikolaj Ehlers — and Appleton’s time on ice rank tends to draw the most heat.

The thing is, Appleton makes a lot of the kinds of plays that coaches like. He eats checks to get pucks out. He forechecks with good positioning and purpose. His offence doesn’t tend to match his second-line role, but that’s a weakness shared by Lowry and Niederreiter as a general rule.

Just not on this night.

Winnipeg’s second goal was the product of a Neal Pionk stretch pass to Niederreiter, who promptly spun a pass to Appleton making a perfectly timed cut up the left wing boards. The play was clearly scripted, it was executed perfectly, and this time Appleton’s finish was up there with that of Winnipeg’s top players.

Appleton finished the night with three points while Niederreiter and Lowry had two each. The Jets’ third line of Perfetti, Namestnikov and Ehlers had a good first shift, wherein Perfetti found Josh Morrissey for a scoring chance in the circle, but otherwise failed to create any offence and was mostly hemmed in its own zone.

We’ll be referring to Lowry’s line as Winnipeg’s second line from here on out.

2. Winnipeg’s top forwards are all gas, no brakes

Mark Scheifele had the game’s first true scoring chance — a breakaway made possible by an Evan Bouchard mishandle at the Jets’ blue line. He’d eventually score a power-play goal, set up by a crisp Gabriel Vilardi zone entry (in Vilardi’s 200th NHL game) and a perfect Ehlers pass.

Most of Scheifele’s night was spent matched up against McDavid at five-on-five — a matchup the Oilers wanted — and it exposed a trouble spot we’ve harped on before. Despite their offensive brilliance, there are times when Scheifele and Kyle Connor simply don’t get the puck out of their own zone. McDavid’s line outshot the Jets 6-1 with Scheifele on the ice and took 14 shot attempts to the Jets’ three. McDavid is his own animal, sometimes going one-on-four and winning, but Winnipeg’s top line left holes in its forecheck that the Oilers exploited for scoring chances.

In the end, it didn’t matter because Connor was automatic in a way that even McDavid wasn’t.

Whereas McDavid went coast-to-coast by beating Scheifele and Vilardi up the ice on a breakout, then beating Colin Miller one-on-one, then feathering a pass to Zach Hyman for a tap-in attempt that didn’t work out, Connor set a goal scoring record.

Connor’s power-play goal 9:33 into the second period was the seventh straight time he’s scored a goal in a season-opening game — the longest such streak in NHL history. The only times he hasn’t scored in the Jets’ season opener, he wasn’t playing in it — he was playing for the Moose.

Lowry was at a loss for words trying to explain it.

“I can’t even fathom that, to be honest,” Lowry said. “He’s one of the most consistent goal scorers in the NHL. He does it in a variety of ways, but he always finds a way to end up on the scoresheet and impact games.”

The Scheifele and Namestnikov lines managed to be even in terms of plus/minus, despite the Jets’ 6-0 win. I don’t think too many people will complain about the lack of five-on-five production if the power play keeps looking like this:

3. Morrissey can still dance with the best of them

Winnipeg’s Norris Trophy candidate doesn’t get enough credit for the defensive part of his game. He believes that the best defencemen in the world can play top minutes against top players in addition to posting eye-catching offensive numbers.

On Thursday, Morrissey had his hands full with the McDavid line but managed to outscore it thanks to Lowry’s first-period goal. Morrissey didn’t get an assist on that play, despite sending the Oilers zone into chaos with a slap pass at the top of the zone.

He left the scorekeepers no choice with this second-period pass to Rasmus Kupari.

Kupari played 28 games for the Jets last season and one more for Manitoba; he didn’t score in any of them, making this perfect one-timer Kupari’s first goal for the Jets organization. The 2018 first-round pick is meant to be more than a fourth-line player — he has the size, speed and hands to create more offence — but has often looked one read behind the play since arriving in Winnipeg.

Between this goal and the preseason assist he picked up on Pionk’s highlight reel goal, it looks like the game might be slowing down for him.

“That’s one thing I noticed in camp, the decisions he was making on the ice,” Lowry said. “There’s a maturity to his game that’s taken a step forward. It’s going to be critical, getting contributions up and down our lineup. You’ve seen what he’s been able to do on the PK in the preseason. We see his skill on display every day in practice but for him to convert and get that to go in, it’s gotta be a good feeling for him. And we were all really excited for him.”

4. All-Hermantown second pair can help Jets win games

This season, Dylan Samberg and Pionk could be anything from the reason Winnipeg outperforms all expectations to the weakness that other teams exploit. For Samberg, it’s his first full-season attempt at top-four minutes. For Pionk, he’s often been chaotic defensively despite producing five straight 30-plus point seasons. He’s also going from a veteran top-four solution in Brenden Dillon to a promising, smart, but less experienced partner in Samberg.

Pionk put Winnipeg’s defensive corps this way in a recent one-on-one.

“Someone’s gotta step up. All of us across the room, at some point, we were given the keys. ‘All right, it’s your turn to step up. It’s time for you to get more ice time. It’s time for you to prove yourself,’” Pionk said. “We have a couple of guys in the locker room that will do that this year and I’m confident we can get it done.”

Pionk, 29, has known the 6-foot-4, 215-pound, 25-year-old Samberg since Samberg was an undersized high school defenceman for the Hermantown Hawks. Their families know each other well, having brought many a casserole to Hermantown’s outdoor rinks on a blustery day.

“I’ve watched him since he was a squirt hockey player,” Pionk said. “Since he was little, if you’d believe it. He’s a freak athlete. Some people don’t know that about him. Obviously you see his golf game but any game we play, whatever it is, whatever he picks up, he’s usually the best at it. I know he can translate that onto the ice. He’ll be able to give us a little more this year and I’m sure he will.”

How’s this for a first act?

Samberg’s first game as a top-four defenceman ended with a goal, a plus-two rating, a key shot block and a last-second puck retrieval behind Hellebuyck that preserved Hellebuyck’s shutout. He played 23:21 — the second-most ice time of all Jets skaters — despite missing a shift after getting hit by a puck in the third period.

“A lot of the time last year, Arnie was harping on me: Even when you make a good play in the defensive zone, it’s not over yet,” Samberg said in a recent one-on-one. “You’ve got to make that next play.”

Between Samberg’s pinch on his goal and Pionk’s stretch pass that led to Appleton’s beauty, the Jets’ second pair had a solid night making “that next play” in Edmonton.

(Photo of Nikolaj Ehlers, Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor: Codie McLachlan / Getty Images)





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About The Author

Avatar of Rachel Thomas
Rachel Thomas is a writer who focuses on arts, automotive, travel, and fashion. She also writes about her hobbies: cooking, reading, and playing video games. Rachel has been a writer for Free Press Georgia since 2016. In that time she has written about everything from the best restaurants in Atlanta to how to make your own face mask at home. When she's not writing for FPG she spends her time with her husband and two cats in their apartment.

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