Recap: Winnipeg Jets @ St. Louis Blues

5 days ago  /  Arctic Ice Hockey

After a 3 month hiatus…the Game Recaps at Arctic Ice Hockey are back!!!



The Winnipeg Jets were a bit short-handed when they took on the St. Louis Blues on Saturday, missing star defenseman Josh Morrissey, starting goalie Connor Hellebuyck, and bottom six forward Morgan Barron. With only 26 games left in the 2024-25 NHL regular season, the True Northers are looking to lock up the top spot in the Central and tonight gives them the first opportunity to start working towards that goal. Our team was in the midst of an 8 game winning streak when the NHL’s regular season paused for a couple weeks…could they keep their winning ways going in their first game back?? Lets find out….



GAME RECAP



When the puck dropped after the obligatory national anthems, it seemed like the Winnipeg Jets players didn’t spend much time thinking about hockey as they were lying on the beaches of Mexico. As a result, the St. Louis Blues pinned our squad in their own end for the early part of the 1st period, yet it was the True Northers who opened the scoring 5 minutes in when Cole Perfetti threaded a pass to Nikolaj Ehlers on a 2 on 1. The hometown Blues were able to even things up 10 minutes later when Logan Stanley pinched in the neutral zone to deliver a bodycheck, allowing St. Louis to tie the game on their own 2 on 1.



The 2nd period continued to see both teams try to shake of the rust of the 2 week break as neither franchise could create consistent offense. Just as the game passed the midway point, Mark Scheifele floated a pretty no look pass to Gabriel Vilardi in the low slot. Despite having two Blues’ defenders draped all over him, Gabe was able to kick the pass towards his stick and swatted the puck out of the air to send it through the 5 hole. The middle frame ended with Winnipeg up 2 to 1, despite the expected goals indicating that St. Louis was the better team (1.39 to 0.78).



The Jets had a nightmare start to the 3rd period when they allowed the Blues to score on a wrap around just 16 seconds into the frame. Fortunately for us fans, being behind for the first time in the game appeared to spark something in Winnipeg’s skaters and the quality of play picked up. This resulted in a few quality scoring chances for the visiting team, including Dylan Samberg beating the Blues’ tender only for the puck to go off the post and a couple high danger looks from the Jets’ top line. St. Louis was able to take back momentum late in the period when Neal Pionk was flagged for not one, but two different holding penalties with 5 minutes to play. The Blues took advantage of the extra space fairly quickly when a long blast beat Eric Comrie to give them a 3-2 lead. Winnipeg was able to kill off the final 2 minutes of Pionk’s sentence but that only left them a minute to try for the tying marker. With Comrie on the bench for the extra skater, Scheifele helped free the puck on the forecheck and that allowed Perfetti to set up Kyle Connor for a mid-ranged shot. In his usual territory, Vilardi became one of the heroes of the evening when he got a stick on KFC’s blast to tie the match with just 28 seconds on the clock.



The overtime frame was not great, as St. Louis seemingly won every face-off making Winnipeg chase the play right from the start. Comrie made some big saves early in the OT period and that eventually allowed the Jets to set up Connor for a couple quality looks. Neither goaltender was willing to give up the winner…so off to Winnipeg’s first shoot-out of the season.




St. Louis started things off but were denied when Comrie stretched out his right pad to stop the puck.



Winnipeg sent out Scheifele first and while he did beat the Blues’ Joel Hofer, he couldn’t solve the crossbar.



The next St. Louis player made a similar move to the first guy and once again Comrie used his pad to keep the puck out.



Enter Connor for the Jets’ second shoot-out attempt and the sniper was able to send the puck to the top shelf on his 11th shot of the game to give Winnipeg the advantage.



Needing a goal to keep the SO going, the Blues’ player once again tried to beat Comrie to the right and this time they were way more successful in getting the goalie to bite on the feint to the left. Not willing to give up, Winnipeg’s backup flung himself across the crease and was able to reach out his goalie stick to deflect the shot away at the last moment.




FINAL SCORE: WINNIPEG 4 ST. LOUIS 3 (SO)



FINAL STATS



Shots: 28-24 WPG / Hits: 34-23 STL / Face-Offs: 67.3% STL / x Goals: 2.80 STL – 2.30 WPG /



MoneyPuck’s Deserve to Win: 68% STL / High-Medium Danger Scoring Chances: 13 to 8 STL



SCORING SUMMARY from ESPN






SHOT CHART from MoneyPuck






ADVANCED SKATER STATS from MoneyPuck









GOALIE STATS from ESPN & MoneyPuck









If you would like to dive deeper into the game’s stats, follow the links below to the game pages:



MoneyPuck: Winnipeg Jets vs. St. Louis Blues – Saturday February 22 2025 – MoneyPuck.com



NaturalStatTrick: Winnipeg Jets @ St Louis Blues, 2025-02-22



BOJA’s Observations:




2 pts for Cole Perfetti….now 11 in his last 8 games. While Cole is never going to be a physical force in the NHL, it does seem like he is finding his feet and learning how to excel at this level. Hopefully he can keep it up into the post-season.



Gabriel Vilardi gets his 25th & 26th goals of the season…including the game tying goal with Comrie on the bench. Such sweet eye-hand coordination by the winger, it constantly amazes me.



Kyle Connor picked up an assist on the Game Tying Goal and then wins it for Winnipeg in the shootout. With 10 shots on the Blues’ goal on Saturday night (not including shootout), the winger had over 35% of all Jets’ shots in the game. Wasn’t the perfect example of the BOJA Boost, but it’ll do.



Adam Lowry looked good in his first game back and he ended up 3rd on the Jets in expected goals (xG). His line was the only one that consistently caused St. Louis problems throughout the entire contest and even though Winnipeg went 8-0-0 when he was out, it is good to have the captain back.



Eric Comrie’s stats above weren’t that impressive, but Winnipeg’s backup made some timely saves (especially in OT) and really did deserve to pick up the 2 points.



The pairing of Logan Stanley & Dylan DeMelo surprisingly led all Jets’ defenders in xG% (79.9%), but they were helped by coach Scott Arniel matching them with Lowry’s forward line more often than not.




So the Winnipeg Jets set another franchise record this season…this time they have established the longest winning streak in franchise history with their 9 game run. Pretty amazing that our squad has had streaks of 7, 8, and 9 games this season. In case you are wondering, the NHL record is 17 straight contests with a win and that was done by the 1992-93 Pittsburgh Penguins.



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