Game 41 Analytical Recap: Another Lead Lost as the Jets Fall to Vegas
A familiar collapse, fleeting positives, and a team running out of confidence.
I don’t want to be negative. I’ve always tried, albeit not always successfully, to keep a level head. I’ve always tried to not be overly negative or overly positive.
But the Winnipeg Jets are making it very hard not to be negative during this slide.
The Winnipeg Jets once again found themselves leading, this time 2-0 against the Vegas Golden Knights, only to have it slip away in overtime.
What makes it even harder to stay “measured” is that the team did not even play well.
Only against Minnesota and Detroit did the Jets actually outchance their opponent by a meaningful margin. Yes, there were games like Ottawa where they had a slight edge, but not nearly enough.
Only three games featured strong finishing. Only two featured strong goaltending.
They have been a mess in almost every dimension.
Nothing is going well.
Which is unfortunate, because the Jets actually were playing well, for the first half:
For the first half of the game, Winnipeg was trading some chances with Vegas.
The shots and chances were limited, but it looked like a respectable defensive game from both teams.
Some might call it boring.
In a matchup of strong defense versus strong defense, the Jets would normally be expected to shine thanks to the goaltending edge. And that is what was happening early, especially with Vegas getting weak netminding.
Then the Jets let up slightly halfway through the game, and Vegas smelled blood.
I can talk analytics endlessly. I can criticize and praise decisions all night.
But none of that matters as much as the health of the players. I really hope Haydn Fleury is okay.
His absence forced the Jets to juggle defensive pairings, which only magnifies the issue of having someone like Luke Schenn on the roster. Arniel clearly feels he needs Schenn, but also clearly does not trust him in important minutes, even when desperate.
I do have to ask though, did the Toews line actually look pretty good, or was that just me?
At least early on, before the team collapsed.
I am not going to defend the signing or the reasoning behind bringing in Jonathan Toews, especially with bonuses tied to games played.
But he has been better lately.
I am not a big fan of Game Score. I find it far inferior to value metrics like synthetic Goals or Goals Above Replacement. Still, all three tend to move in the right direction when a player’s performance improves.
That does not mean Toews is good, let alone worth the $4.75M pace he is on, but it is at least a positive trend.
Of course, the results were still not good.
The entire team collapsed. There is no point singling out individuals when nearly everyone was equally ineffective.
There is good news, Jets fans. It will get better.
I am not Nostradamus, and I have no idea when that will happen, but it has to happen eventually.
Right?
At least there was secondary scoring. Two droughts ended with goals from Perfetti and Schenn. Just a few more to go and we’ll have a team again.
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