The Winnipeg Jets were desperate for a win on Saturday night, and it showed. Able to limit the Tampa Bay Lightning to only 16 shots during the game, the Jets skated off the ice with a 2-1 victory at Amalie Arena. The loss is Tampa’s second in a row.
It became quite clear early on in the contest that the Jets were a hungry bunch. Fighting for their playoff lives in the Western Conference, the Jets simply cannot afford to drop many more contests down the stretch. A resurgent Los Angeles Kings squad has pushed Winnipeg into a real race. The bottom line is that this win was a big one for them. They wanted it badly. They worked hard for it. They got it.
Had it not been for some incredibly strong play by Andrei Vasilevskiy, the Lightning could have fallen behind early. He made numerous key saves, including a whopping 16 (!) in the second frame, to keep the game locked at zeroes through the first two periods of play. He did his part. The skaters let him down.
While they did eventually lose the game, the Lightning did get on the board first. It wasn’t until 4:13 of the third period. Nikita Kucherov, assisted by Jonathan Drouin and Matt Carle, fired the puck past Ondrej Pavelec to make it 1-0.
At that point, it was hard not to get the sense that the Bolts were going to take the ball and run with it. As the final score shows, that didn’t happen. The Lightning failed to take advantage of a Winnipeg goaltender who is widely regarded as one of the worst starters in the league. Generating only 16 shots is unacceptable. Against Pavelec, any shot is a good shot. The Lightning weren’t good enough in that department, and they paid the ultimate price.
However, their journey to that ultimate price payment was not without controversy. About four minutes after he scored, Nikita Kucherov was given a five-minute major and game misconduct for boarding for this hit:
Should Nikita Kucherov be handed discipline for this hit that bloodied Tobias Enstrom? http://t.co/2v6Uj7UAfG pic.twitter.com/glQz7go5ID
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) March 15, 2015Granted, the officials were far from perfect on this occasion. They called this Anton Stralman hip-check a trip:
Looked at the replay a few more times, hit was a solid hip check. Painful, sure. Clean, certainly. #NHLJets pic.twitter.com/giFlYE7Noc
— Scott Billeck (@ScottBilleck) March 15, 2015That Kucherov major gave the Jets the opening they needed. On the power play, Drew Stafford, who was sent to Winnipeg as part of the Evander Kane deal with Buffalo, wristed the puck past a screened Vasilevskiy to knot things up at one. Only minutes later, this time in a four-on-four situation (with Kucherov still in the box), Blake Wheeler took advantage of an egregious Victor Hedman turnover to pot what would eventually become the game-winning goal. As Bobby ‘The Chief’ Taylor said on the broadcast, players can’t be making that kind of mistake at this point in the season.
Even down by one, the Lightning weren’t out of it. They still had more than seven minutes left on the clock after Wheeler scored. How did they respond? They fired one more shot at Pavelec before the final buzzer rang. One. Measly. Shot. Inexcusable doesn’t begin to describe it.
Some Lightning fans will undoubtedly be upset about the way the Kucherov penalty impacted the final score, but the result was right. The Lightning deserved to lose this hockey game. The Jets deserved to win. Give full credit to Winnipeg for their efforts; Tampa Bay needs to be much, much better.
As always, thanks for reading.
Michael Stuart has been the Tampa Bay Lightning writer for HockeyBuzz since 2012. Visit his archive to read more or follow him on Twitter.