WINNIPEG — Now, that’s what you call taking care of business.
The Winnipeg Jets did exactly what they needed to do this weekend to get back into the Western Conference playoff conversation.
It started with a hard-earned 3-0 win over the St. Louis Blues on Friday night at MTS Centre and continued with a 6-1 beatdown of the Colorado Avalanche on the same ice surface Saturday night.
They still face long odds when it comes to getting into the post-season, but the Jets are making it interesting. They moved to within two points — at least temporarily — of the Los Angeles Kings in the race for the final Western Conference wild card playoff spot.
“The way we’re playing right now, we feel like we have the chance to make that wild card spot,” left-winger Nikolaj Ehlers said after his team improved to 30-30-6 overall and 5-1-2 in the last eight games. “We’ve just got to keep playing like this. I feel like we’ve been playing some really good hockey lately. Those five games before the break were really good. We’ve been trying to take that with us after the break and we’ve won the last two games so we are doing something right.”
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The Kings do have two games in hand and were playing a late game Saturday night at home against the struggling Vancouver Canucks. The Jets moved to within one point of the St. Louis Blues, who hold ninth spot in the West.
Many of the Jets said they can feel a real momentum building with this team. It started with a big win over Dallas at home on Valentine’s Day and has seemingly grown with every game.
“The growth is spawn out of desperation,” Jets captain Blake Wheeler said. “You realize that you have an opportunity to battle for a playoff position. Last year we weren’t playing meaningful hockey down the stretch and that’s no fun. At the very least, with such a young group of guys, you want to give them a chance to play in big games down the stretch and see how they respond. We’ve responded well so far.”
Saturday’s game was never close.
Star rookie Patrik Laine got it started 4:22 into the first period, blasting a howitzer off the stick of Colorado’s Matt Duchene and past Avalanche starter Calvin Pickard. It was Laine’s 32nd goal of the season, which leads all NHL rookies.
Wheeler made it 2-0 at 9:47 on a power play and just 15 seconds later Laine made a highlight-reel pass to Mark Scheifele for a an open-netter that made it 3-0.
Ehlers, who also made a nice pass to Laine on the Scheifele goal, was the star of the second period as he made a patient play to hold onto the puck on a two-on-one and then found trailer Ben Chiarot, who deked Pickard for his first of the season.
Ehlers scored 1:58 later to make it 5-0, tapping one in off a great feed from Wheeler.
Defenceman Jacob Trouba made it 6-0 with an unassisted goal in the third period.
The Jets are a strong offensive team and they made it look easy against the NHL’s worst lineup.
Wheeler, who has three goals and three assists in the last two games, has been leading the way but the Jets got strong contributions from Laine, Ehlers, defencemen Trouba and Josh Morrissey and goalie Connor Hellebuyck, who came within 15.4 seconds of recording his second straight shutout.
“There’s always good energy in our building, but there was a real good buzz tonight, though,” Jets coach Paul Maurice said. “Maybe it’s Saturday night. You could feel it right down our bench so we started right and real quick. Right on top of our game and jumped on them a little bit so it was a good night.”
They pretty much all need to be good nights from here on in.
While close to the playoff line, the Jets are running out of games and any losses could be potentially crippling.
And while they easily handled St. Louis and Colorado, two teams that came in on losing streaks, the Jets’ next opponents will be the two teams that met in last year’s Stanley Cup final — San Jose on Monday night and Pittsburgh on Wednesday.
The Jets have one point in three games against those two teams this season, but if they are truly playing their best hockey right now and that should give them a fighting chance.
“Those are two of the better teams in the league so we know where we want to go and we’re going to need to string together some wins here,” said Trouba. “No better time to do it than right now.”
They have 16 games left and they have very little margin for error.
But if they continue to be physical, hard on the forecheck, offensively creative and get dependable goaltending, we’re saying there’s a chance.
Twyman@postmedia.com
