GAMEDAY: Blues at Jets Game 1

WINNIPEG – The wait is over.

The Winnipeg Jets begin their ultimate journey today with Game 1 of their opening round series with the St. Louis Blues.

With home ice advantage throughout the playoffs, the Jets want to make sure that they take care of business at Canada Life Centre. The Jets are 6-4 all-time in Game 1 of a series, including winning three of the past four Game 1s they have played.

“We want to play our game. That’s what we want to do. We want to have a good start to the series and get some momentum. Every game is a different beast, so you’ve got to be ready for everything,” said Mark Scheifele.

“I think that’s what we’ve done all year is to be ready for anything and whatever happens, happens.”

The message has been clear this week, the Jets are not thinking about last spring at all. This team has put that behind them and are looking forward to this opportunity.

“All through this year has just been focusing on what we can do to improve every day as individuals and as a group. Pushing the envelope,” said Josh Morrissey.

“We did a great job of that in the regular season and for us now, heading into the playoffs, like I said, we’ve done a great job about worrying about what we need to do, our structure, our game, all those things and that’s got to be our focus here.”

Like many of the 16 teams that are entering the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Jets do have some key players that won’t be available starting with Nikolaj Ehlers who is week-to-week and Gabe Vilardi who is day-to-day.

“One of the reasons we had such a good season is our depth and our ability to have players step up in injury cases, illness, all those things, and I think that’s something we’ve really taken a lot of pride in as a group is our ability to have guys step up when someone’s out,” said Morrissey.

“Huge losses but our goal is to have guys step up, guys have stepped up in the past and I feel confident we’ve got guys able to do that and hopefully we can get those guys back at some point.”

The Jets will not have a morning skate so it looks like the roster will be what we saw at practice on Friday.

Connor Hellebuyck finished the season with 47 wins this season which is the most in franchise history… Only two goalies in league history have posted more wins in a season. He joins Martin Brodeur and Bernie Parent as the only goaltenders in league history to post 47-plus wins along with eight-plus shutouts in a single season.

In terms of playoff experience, the Blues lead the way with 936 games and the Jets have 723 games which is the third fewest of the 16 playoff teams. The Blues have ten combined Stanley Cup rings while the Jets have two, both belong to Luke Schenn.

Watch the Jets pregame show "The Check In" every day on YouTube, X and Facebook.

The Jets have been building a brand throughout the 82-game regular season to get them to this point. Throughout those 82 games, they have been pushed and pushed right back which bodes well for the roller coaster ride of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

“But I'd say at the end of the day, we talked about our group (having a) competitive edge. I think I have talked about that from the start,” said head coach Scott Arniel.

“Our competitive edge, throughout our lineup — whether you're skilled, whether you're a grinder or however you play the game — we were never going to get out competed and we've done a great job of that this year.”