ST. LOUIS -- The Winnipeg Jets will try to put the frustrations of their last game behind them when they play the St. Louis Blues in Game 4 of the Western Conference First Round at Enterprise Center on Sunday (1 p.m. ET; FDSNMW, MAX, truTV, TBS, SN, TVAS, CBC).
The Jets lead the best-of-7 series 2-1 but struggled in every facet in a 7-2 loss to the Blues in Game 3 on Thursday. Winnipeg was down 2-0 3:11 into the first period, and never really got back into it. Center Adam Lowry said the key to getting back to their game is “execution, playing fast.”
“There are things they did really well that limited our ability to get to our transition, to get to our forecheck, allowed them to get on the body and turn pucks over and put us on our heels," Lowry said. "I think as we saw in Winnipeg, when we get to our game, we’re efficient through the neutral zone, we’re good at turning pucks over and create a lot of zone time and really limit the chances. Watching Game 3 back, (they had) a lot of time and space through the neutral zone.
“We knew they were going to throw a lot of pucks at the net and it’s getting in shooting lanes, winning those 1-on-1 battles and winning the battles down low to stop the zone time they started to get. It starts in the defensive zone and leads offensively to us possessing the puck more, breaking out the puck more efficiently and getting to our forecheck.”
Meanwhile, the Blues are riding a wave of confidence off Thursday’s game. They know the Jets will probably adjust, and they’ll try to be ready for it.
“We are trying to stay ahead of it because that’s an excellent team that’s really well coached. You try and anticipate maybe things that will change, but the thing that’s really important for us is that we stay true to who we are, our identity, that attitude of being aggressive offensively and defensively,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said. “The changes that we thought we would make (in Game 3), I don’t even know if they materialized. It was just more of an attitude that was different about us.”
Teams that have taken a 3-1 lead in a best-of-7 series in the Stanley Cup Playoffs have won the series 91 percent of the time (316-32). The Blues are 8-20 (.286) when trailing 2-1 in a series.
Here is a breakdown of Game 4:
Jets: Winnipeg has talked about getting out to good starts throughout the series and the lack of doing so hurt them badly in Game 3. That start has to be there in Game 4. “We need to try and get to our game quicker than they do, but I think the belief in this group is in the way we defend, the structure we have,” Lowry said. “We don’t have a (regular-season) record like we do without being able to bounce back, without coming into big games and rising to the occasion.”
Blues: St. Louis has gotten a bulk of its scoring from its top line, left wing Pavel Buchnevich, center Robert Thomas and right wing Jimmy Snuggerud. Buchnevich has six points (three goals, three assists) in three games, including his hat trick from Game 3. Thomas has five points (one goal, four assists) and Snuggerud two points (one goal, one assist). The Jets had a hard time stopping this line in Game 3, and the Blues will try to take advantage of home ice and last change with this group again.
