First off to say.. Who doesn’t love a great white out..? (Am I right..?) In all seriousness, the Winnipeg Jets are sonic booming out of the gate. They sang the Blues last night in a 3-2 victory. What continues to surprise me about this team is the goal scoring! They are averaging 4.5 goals a game (I know I know small sample.. Like I haven’t heard that before 😉 anyways, they averaged a little over 3.1 a game. Mind you they are doing this all on a 7.9 shooting %. League average floats between 9-10%. The Power Play has made a huge improvement from last year. The Jets finished at 18% on the PP last year, that was 22nd in the league. That’s behind teams like: San Jose, Seattle, Coyotes, and Red Wings to name a few. This year has seem them takeoff into the top spot so far. They lead the league at 44%, they have scored 8 goals on 18 chances. Those 18 chances by the way, that’s 27th in the league. Do you like apples?
The haters will say they haven’t beaten anyone, they may have a point while Winnipeg has played the 27th ranked current strength of schedule, if that’s the case they are doing what they should be. They are second in the league in point differential at +17.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before too.. But that Conor Hellebuyck guy.. Yeah he’s pretty f***in’ good. As a team they lead the league in goals against, only giving up 10 in 6 games. Back to Mr.Vezina.. Oops sorry misspelled Hellebuyck.. He is currently 3rd in the league in save % .948, he’s 2nd in goals saved above average (meaning he’s a brick wall), he’s second in goals against average at 1.4and he’s already got a shutout under his belt. All this while seeing the 15th most shots but that is mostly based on the schedule so far since other teams are at 8-9 games played.
I can’t wait to see what a beautiful white-out it will be. The towels flying, the boys buzzin’, and perhaps even an appearance by Lord Stanley himself. That’s what I see in the Jets future.
DAC