It took a little more than a month and nearly the entire five-minute overtime Sunday for the Winnipeg Jets to register back-to-back victories. Blake Wheeler made it happen when he scored with 1.7 seconds left in OT to give the Jets a 2-1 victory against the Colorado Avalanche at Pepsi Center.
"I had no idea of the time left,"
said Wheeler, who also set up Andrew
Ladd's third-period goal that gave the Jets a brief 1-0 lead. "I
knew it was toward the end of it. We were at the end of our shift,
too. We knew this was the last gasp. We wanted to get one more crack
at it and we were able to find a hole there."
The Jets, who defeated the Minnesota Wild 6-4 at
home on Friday, hadn't won back-to-back games since Nov. 25-27 when
they beat the New Jersey Devils and New York Islanders.
"We're playing more consistent, but our
season isn't built on two games," Jets coach Claude Noel
said. "But we'll certainly take the positives out of the two
games."
The winning play began after Jets goalie Al
Montoya, who made 33 saves, stopped Ryan
O'Reilly's shot from point-blank range with a few seconds
remaining. The Jets took possession and raced into the Avalanche end.
Dustin
Byfuglien shot the puck off the end boards, Mark
Scheifele got to the puck and passed to Wheeler in the slot for a
redirection between goalie Semyon
Varlamov's pads. Varlamov, who made 35 saves, got a piece of the
puck, but it leaked through and crossed the goal line just before the
buzzer that would have sent the game to a shootout.
"Mark has good hockey sense,"
Wheeler said. "That's the best part of his game. He was
looking shot the whole way, but I could see out of the corner of his
eye he was motioning to me to see if anyone was coming. I was able to
get by my guy and just called for it at the last second. All I had to
do was redirect it at the net and was able to find a hole."
The Avalanche have lost four games in a row
(0-1-3), but they gained a point and are third in the Central
Division, five points ahead of the Dallas Stars and the Wild.
"I'm not happy because we need those two
points; it's all about the points," Varlamov said. "I
can't lose that game, not like that. We got one point, that's a
positive thing. I think we played a good game. We had so many chances
to score and we just didn't score, but I think offensively we played
very well, created so many chances in front of the net."
Ladd snapped a scoreless tie at 11:42 of the third
period with a one-timer from between the circles off a pass from
Wheeler, but the Avalanche tied the game 29 seconds later on a goal
by Nathan
MacKinnon, whose shot from the right wing deflected into the net
off a Jets defenseman's skate.
"We tried to tell our guys, don't look for
perfect plays," Avalanche coach Patrick Roy said. "We're
looking for perfect plays all the time. Just put it on net. You never
know what could happen, and it's exactly how we scored. You don't
have to make pretty plays all the time. You just need to put the puck
at the net and go to the net. That's the part I thought we were
missing in our game tonight."
Said Montoya: "It was an unfortunate
bounce. We had just scored. They grabbed a little bit of momentum
back. At the same time, we stuck with our game plan. It shows a lot
about this team. You don't get frustrated. You keep doing what we
were doing and stuck with it and got the win."
Neither team could generate much in the way of
quality scoring chances until the third period and overtime. The
Avalanche had 12 shots in the third and five in the overtime. The
Jets had 11 in the third and four in OT. The Avalanche also lost
right wing PA
Parenteau to a knee injury at 16:20 of the second period when he
and Jets defenseman Jacob
Trouba clipped skates at center ice. Parenteau needed help into
the trainer's room. Roy said he would know more about Parenteau's
status on Monday. Parenteau, who has nine goals and 15 assists, was
skating on a line with Gabriel
Landeskog and Paul
Stastny. His absence forced Roy to shuffle his lines for the
remainder of the game.
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