A heck of a 1st and an equally good 3rd propelled the Jets to their ninth win of the season as they go into Detroit and defeat the Red Wings 6-2 in their only visit of the season to Michigan.
For those who would like to take a deeper dive into the advanced stats click here to see the results from the game via Natural Stat Trick.
Notable:
The big focus was whether the Michigan Man (in this instance Kyle Connor not Connor Hellebuyck) would get to 500 points in his home state after his four point performance last game brought him to 499. He would do that and more in the 1st period putting up one goal and two assists being in on all three Winnipeg goals of the period.
Connor now has a point in every single game (10) the Jets have played this season. He’s up to 9G 8A for 17 points. Connor actually ended last regular season on an eight game points streak which makes this an 18 gamer (by NHL standards).
With an assist in the 1st period Neal Pionk tied Josh Morrissey for 3rd overall in the NHL for points among defencemen. Not too shabby.
Looked like the visitors would cruise to victory but they got called for three straight penalties and the 18th ranked PP scored twice on three chances against the 4th ranked PK to bring them within one after 40 minutes.
However a good start to the 3rd period with a lucky goal by Nino Niederreiter opened the flood gates for the Jets. That was his fifth goal of the season and tied him with Chris Thorburn for 34th on the all-time points list. According to the Jets twitter account he becomes the fifth fastest to score to open a period behind Kyle Wellwood (0:08 in 2011), Andrew Ladd (0:08 in 2013), Paul Stastny (o:08 in 2021) and Bryan Little (0:09 in 2014).
Winnipeg finally got a power play and the top ranked group went to work with the second unit getting it done as Neal Pionk got his second of the game to make it a 5-2 game.
And then just seconds after their second power play of the game concluded Colin Miller found the back of the net to make it a 6-2 contest. The D group up to eight goals on the season which is a pace of 65 collectively. When Rick Bowness was head coach he wanted his group to get to mid 40s so not too shabby a start by the blueliners.
Multipoint Game:
Kyle Connor 1G 2A
Neal Pionk 2G
Gabriel Vilardi 1G 1A
Highlights:
Player/Coach post-game media:
Illegal Curve Post-Game Show:
Up next:
The Jets travel to Columbus next where they will take on the Blue Jackets on Friday night. Begin your day with all the latest Jets and Moose news in the AM Papers on illegalcurve.com which are available starting at 7 AM CDT. They are off tomorrow.
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