“The Blues went into defend mode and we saw what happened on the Connor goal,” Arniel said
Far too often, the Winnipeg Jets ended up on the wrong side in the battle of the dots in the series opener against the St. Louis Blues.
“We weren’t very good (in the faceoff circle),” head coach Scott Arniel said. “We were way below 50 per cent.”
The Jets won 26 and St.Louis won 35 of 61 total draws in the series opener.
The Jets won, arguably, the most important faceoff of the game late in the third period, punishing the Blues dearly on a well-executed set play.
Mark Scheifele won the draw directly back to Neal Pionk and immediately skated forward and circled the net. Meanwhile, Pionk tossed the puck across to Josh Morrissey at the right point as Scheifele came around the goal to get the puck in the faceoff circle to the right of Jordan Binnington. Scheifele then slid the puck across the slot to Connor for the game winner at 18:24.
The Jets went on to win 5-3.
“The Blues went into defend mode and we saw what happened on the Connor goal,” Arniel said.
The head coach didn’t like the overall compete level for the puck on scramble draws.
“It is not on the centreman to win these draws clean,” Arniel said. “There’s a lot of 50-50 pucks, and that’s something we keep track of during the season. We are number 10 in the league on 50-50 draws and coming up with pucks. We have to get back to that. It is an area that we’re talking about. We’ll look at that stuff and hopefully we’ll be a little bit better on Monday.”
Game 2 is set for Monday at 6:30 p.m
