1 week Ago By Paul Friesen
Going into his return to Winnipeg as a Stanley Cup champion, Paul Maurice was overflowing with compliments towards his former team. “They’ve come of age,” the Florida Panthers boss said. “Their best players.
.. these guys are now in their prime.
We don’t feel there are any holes to their game.” Maurice lauded their speed, their checking line, their structure, their defence and of course goalie Connor Hellebuyck. He didn’t mention the bank shot of fourth-liner Morgan Barron.
His team clinging to a a 4-3 edge with less than two minutes to go and Florida on a power play with their net empty for an extra attacker, Barron took the puck in his own zone, took aim at the side boards, right around the Winnipeg blue line, and banked a long shot the length of the ice into the open cage. Someone take the man to the nearest pool hall. “He went to Cornell, so he knows his angles,” Mark Scheifele said, post-game.
It was Barron’s first goal of the season and he enjoyed the feeling so much he added another empty-netter to cap a 6-3 Jets win, nipping their two-game slide before it became a skid. Nobody asks which goalie you beat, they just ask how many. Scheifele got three himself, leaving the Jets with more wins than anybody in the NHL, improving to 16-3.
Maurice’s Panthers fell to 12-6-1. Up next, a season-long six-game trip beginning in Pittsburgh on Friday. After surviving a couple of early Florida chances, the most dangerous from star pest Matthew Tkachuk, the Jets began to take over the first period.
A Kyle Connor/Scheifele rush got broken up in the Panthers’ zone, but Connor managed to corral the loose puck, dance in on Sergei Bobrovsky and top-shelf a backhand for his 12th of the season. A few minutes later it was Scheifele’s turn, a drop-pass from Connor producing a wrister under Bobrovsky’s catching mitt, Scheifele’s 10th. Five shots, two goals, and a penalty-free 20 minutes in the books.
Things were a little more rough-and-tumble in the next 20, the stripes handing out a dozen minutes in penalties. The Jets had a glorious chance to lengthen their lead with a full five-on-three early in the second, but the NHL’s league-leading power play spent more time passing the rubber around than firing it at Bobrovsky. By the time they got their next man advantage, they’d figured that out.
And when Nik Ehlers fired a long, cross-ice pass to Scheifele, No. 55 had his second of the night. Any thoughts of a rout to avenge the 5-0 loss in Florida three days earlier were put on hold when Panthers D-man A.
J. Greer’s shot ricocheted off Adam Lowry’s foot and past Hellebuyck late in the second. The Jets took that 3-1 lead into the third, only to see the Panthers bite into it with a power-play goal of their own, Sam Reinhart finishing off a tic-tac-toe beauty.
No problem, just get it to Scheifele again. Connor did, right after another power play expired, and it was raining inside just like it was outside – only hats. It was Scheifele’s second hat-trick of the season.
When Hellebuyck robbed Carter Verhaeghe on a two-on-one with Tkachuk, the home side had it all but sealed. Tkachuk, though, made it interesting with Josh Morrissey in the box and Bobrovsky out of the net to create another two-man edge. Tkachuk’s fifth of the year made it a one-goal game.
The rest is bank-shot history. paul.friesen@kleinmdia.
ca X: @friesensunmedia.
