Weekend double gives Jets momentum vs. Red Wings
WINNIPEG, Manitoba -- The suddenly surging Winnipeg Jets have returned home from a surprisingly successful road trip to face the slumping Detroit Red Wings.
The Jets won a pair of tough Central Division games on Saturday and Sunday -- 3-2 against the Blues in St. Louis and 2-1 over the Chicago Blackhawks.
One can excuse Jets fans if they were surprised by the weekend's results as their team failed to score a single point on a disastrous five-game road trip last month.
The Red Wings, meanwhile, have lost four of their last five games but hope a 4-3 overtime road victory over the Metropolitan Division basement-dwelling New York Islanders is a sign of good things to come.
The win boosted Detroit's record to 12-11-3 and 27 points, but it sits in the bottom half of the tightly bunched Atlantic Division but currently outside of the playoff picture by a couple of points.
The Jets (13-13-2) and Red Wings face off Tuesday evening at 8 p.m. (EST) at the MTS Centre.
Wings coach Jeff Blashill saved special praise for his captain, Henrik Zetterberg, 35, who contributed his sixth goal of the season in the winning effort Sunday.
"Zee has been real good all year. He just continues to go. He's one of those funny players that the more ice time he gets, the more juice he has in his legs," he said in the post-game scrum.
Blashill is hoping for a little payback against the Jets, who scored four goals in the third period to beat the Red Wings 5-3 in Detroit on Nov. 4.
Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck stopped 25 of 26 shots in Chicago -- many of which were of the nail-biting variety as the Blackhawks threw everything at him in a last-minute push, which included a 6-on-4 advantage during a power play and their goalie on the bench -- to improve his record to 10-9-0.
Winnipeg's weekend was made even more challenging by the absence of its leading scorer, center Mark Scheifele, who missed both games with a lower-body injury. He is listed as day-to-day.
Center Bryan Little has scored three goals in four games since returning after missing the first six weeks of the season. Both he and Scheifele have only played two full games at the same time this year.
Little said both games this weekend were stressful, right up until the end.
"Especially (Sunday) night. Those are four hard-fought points and points that we need right now against good teams. It was definitely closer and much stressful than we would have liked it but it doesn't matter now, we got it done," Little told the Winnipeg Sun.