The Winnipeg Jets are heading south on a three-game road trip.
The Winnipeg Jets have concluded their season-high, five-game homestand with a 4-1-0 record and are hitting the road for a three-game trip through Tampa Bay, Florida and Nashville.
With wins in six of their last seven games and points in 11 of 13, the Jets are currently firing on all cylinders, despite the lack of head coach Rick Bowness, who remains away from the team since taking a leave of absence on October 23, following a family medical emergency.
Interim head coach Scott Arniel's Jets are 8-2-2 and are currently riding a three-game winning streak.
Most recently, the Jets took care of business against the New Jersey Devils (6-3), Buffalo Sabres (3-2) and the Arizona Coyotes (5-2), to which Winnipeg saw strong offensive play from its first line, while generating much of its attack from the defensive and neutral zones.
“We’ve said from the beginning, that’s the core of our team, that’s the base of how we want to play," Arniel said postgame on Saturday.
"We’re going to defend first. These guys have bought into it. And they’re the ones that are going to take pride in it. I’ve said to you guys before, these guys get excited on the bench when we score goals. But man, do they get excited when guys block shots or when they make great defensive plays..."
The way the Jets are playing through 17 games of 2023-24 indicates significantly stronger attention to detail while away from the puck, and a commitment to a quicker transition to/from offence and defence.
Winger Kyle Connor has shot to the top of the NHL goal scoring leaderboard with 14 goals - currently tied with Toronto's Auston Matthews - while Mark Scheifele's 21 points find himself sitting just one back of Connor for the team lead.
Defenceman Josh Morrissey has 16 points in 17 games and is maintaining the Norris Trophy candidate-worthy pace set last year.
The Jets are also generating offence from a variety of sources, with goals having come from 15 different players. 13 players have multiple goals on the season, while eight have four or more tallies to their name.
“I think we are playing well; we’re doing the right things," Scheifele said on Saturday. "There is going to be mistakes during the game, there is going to be turnovers, there is going to be the other team having good sticks. But we are just buckling down. When one guy makes a mistake, another guy has to bail him out. Sometimes it’s the goalie, sometimes it’s the defender, sometimes it’s the forward. Just gotta keep doing that.”
Winnipeg is tied atop the league with Boston, Dallas, New Jersey, Pittsburgh and Vancouver as teams with six different five-goal scorers on the season.
The lone deficiency at the moment is the team's goaltending.
The duo of Connor Hellebuyck and Laurent Brossoit has generated 10 wins in 17 starts, but the underlying numbers have not been pretty.
For Hellebuyck - who owns a career .916 save percentage and a 2.67 goals against average - the save percentage has been steadily under 90 percent (.897), while his goals against is averaging nearly three per game (2.91).
Brossoit has actually been worse (.875 save percentage and 2.95 goals against average). But much like his partner, Brossoit's numbers appear to be anomalies from his career averages (.907 save percentage and 2.78 goals against average).
Despite the difficult start, the players in front of their goaltending duo are offering support and public praise as the games continue to roll on.
“He was great," Connor said Brossoit's performance Saturday. "It's got to be tough in his situation. Obviously, Connor plays a lot of games. He works really hard in the gym, I mean, some of the stuff he does is pretty ridiculous. He's a strong guy and you can see it the way he pushes, and even his hands. He made a lot of big saves tonight and for him to kind of step in and play as well as he did. Given the time off, I'm sure it's difficult for him to come in like that.”
Winnipeg's three-game road trip leads directly another lengthy stretch of home games, with the team finishing the month and opening December on another four-game homestand.
"In this league, every team is tough to beat and everybody has their different things that they throw at you," Arniel added. "Our group right now is confident and we're doing a lot of really good things and we're a hard team to play against."
Currently sitting at 6-3-1 on home ice, the goal will certainly be to head home with four points in the three games down south.
"You know, you want to be dangerous at home," Connor said. "Historically, I thought we've done a great job at coming here and playing at home and using that home ice advantage the best we can. and obviously in the playoffs it's pretty big. You want home ice advantage and I thought we did a great job.”