One place where the Jets are hoping to get better at, is their penalty kill. St. Louis took 1-0 and 3-2 leads courtesy of their power play, Winnipeg gave up two power play goals in a game for only the third time in their last 43 games. The two previous times ended up being losses.
“But penalty kill, we’ve got to, you know, we’ve got over-aggressive, actually. We talked about how we kill, but we got a little bit too aggressive and we kind of left some openings,” said Arniel.
“And the penalty kill, like I said, those adjustments, power-play, there’s adjustments that you have to make as the series moves on. We’ll look at that stuff and hopefully those areas we’ll be a little bit better.”
If something feels familiar, you are not wrong. Winnipeg has won three straight Game 1’s in the postseason. Now they are hoping to go out and win Game 2, something they haven’t done the last two playoffs.
“I don’t talk about that, the last two playoff years, because this is a different animal, a different year. But we have talked about all season long (is) the next game,” said Arniel.
“Did some homework (Sunday), did some post-game review, looked at some video. Have some things we’ll throw in to (Monday’s) meeting but then push (Saturday night) aside. It’s done, it’s over, it was its own game. (Monday) will have a whole different look to it.”
Depth has been one of the things the Jets have relied on this season, even though they will be without Nikolaj Ehlers and Gabe Vilardi for another game, Winnipeg is comfortable with the group they have. The Jets got three goals from the top line, one from the third and another from the fourth line. Jaret Anderson-Dolan recorded his first playoff goal of his career in his Jets playoff debut.
“Yeah. It’s something you dream of as a kid, scoring a playoff goal. And especially in an environment like that, in the whiteout. I remember growing up watching whiteout’s,” said Anderson-Dolan.
“It’s obviously a crazy environment. Our crowd and fans are so good and so supportive. It’s definitely a cool moment scoring that goal and I kind of just blacked out after it went in honestly.”
