TORONTO — The Winnipeg Jets could have dissected every goal against and mistake made in the aftermath of a forgettable night in Montreal.
The team’s veteran roster instead did what it’s done a lot this season — they flushed it and moved forward.
And now the Jets have the North Division leaders squarely in their sights.
Connor Hellebuyck made 36 saves as Winnipeg defeated Toronto 4-3 on Tuesday in the opener of a three-game series to climb within five points of the Maple Leafs for top spot.
The Jets were run out of the Bell Centre over the weekend in a 7-1 thrashing by the Canadiens that brought a four-game winning streak to a screeching halt, but liked a lot of their performances in the leadup to that miserable showing where nothing went according to the plan.
“We weren’t very good, right?” Winnipeg head coach Paul Maurice said looking back to Saturday. “The whole entire team’s minus, both goalies don’t like their game.
“That wasn’t who we were.”
Jets defenceman Josh Morrissey, who scored his first goal of the campaign Tuesday and played a season-high 29 minutes after Nathan Beaulieu left with an injury, said his group’s composure stood out in the wake of the Montreal mauling as Winnipeg improved to 7-0-1 following a regulation loss in 2020-21.
“Nobody panicked,” he said. “It’s not like the next day we were singling guys out in video and going through all seven goals in slow motion where it feels like the world is ending, but just keeping an even-keel approach.
“It’s a 56-game season and we are going to have some of those here and there. You’ve got to let it go. We had a great practice (Monday), and I bet you no one was even thinking about that coming into the game.”
Andrew Copp, with a goal and an assist, Kyle Connor and Mason Appleton also scored for Winnipeg (16-8-1). Neal Pionk added three assists and Nikolaj Ehlers had a pair for the Jets, who have two games in hand on the Leafs.
“We didn’t go searching,” said Hellebuyck, who allowed four goals on 19 shots Saturday. “We all believed in our game and we stuck to it. You could tell guys were hungry.
“They didn’t let it weigh in a negative way on their brains.”
Auston Matthews, with his NHL-best 19th and 20th goals of the season, and Zach Hyman replied for Toronto (18-7-2). Frederik Andersen stopped 19 shots as the Leafs dropped their third straight in regulation.
“It wasn’t a bad game, but it definitely wasn’t our best,” Matthews said. “We had really good moments at times and had the puck in their zone, and were creating lots of chances. I thought in the third period we had a couple of really good looks.
“You gotta tip your hat to their goalie.”
The Leafs, who returned home returned home following back-to-back defeats to the Vancouver Canucks after sweeping the Edmonton Oilers three straight by a combined 13-1 scoreline, and Jets play eight more times between now and April 24, including Thursday and Saturday back at Scotiabank Arena.
“We’re just going through it here a little bit,” Toronto head coach Sheldon Keefe said. “Every team goes through those stretches like this, but I think there’s lots for us to take away from it.
“We were right there in every game … we could have very easily gotten points out of each.”
Down 2-1 through 20 minutes, Winnipeg got even at 12:45 of the second period when Matthews tried to block Morrissey’s point shot, but instead saw it glance off his airborne skate and fool Andersen.
The Jets then went ahead for the first time with 2:18 left when Ehlers showed great patience off the rush before finding Connor from behind the Toronto net to bury his 12th on a bad Leafs change.
The Leafs had a couple of chances to make it 3-1 earlier in the period before Winnipeg equalized when Alexander Kerfoot had a chance from the slot on Hellebuyck and Ilya Mikheyev fanned on a tap-in off a pass from Morgan Rielly.
Down to five defenceman after Beaulieu took a shot off his hand, the Jets also came close as Mathieu Perreault was denied in tight by Andersen, while Blake Wheeler saw his sneaky deflection smothered by the Toronto goaltender.
Hellebuyck robbed Mitch Marner from point blank four minutes into the third as the Leafs came out of the intermission with more purpose. But the Jets made it 4-2 at 7:53 when Appleton took a little pass from Copp before stepping around a sprawling Rielly and beating Andersen to score his seventh.
Toronto’s goalie then stopped Wheeler on a breakaway with four minutes left in regulation to keep his team close.
Matthews scored his 20th of the campaign with 1:54 left in regulation and Andersen on the bench to make it 4-3, but the home side wouldn’t get any closer as Hellebuyck and some key shot blocks late made the difference.
“He made some huge saves in the third,” Morrissey said of his netminder. “He was rock solid.”
The Leafs, who beat the Jets 3-1 in Toronto on Jan. 18 in the teams’ only meeting, opened the scoring at 8:16 of the first when Hyman took a pass from T.J. Brodie in his own zone and sliced through a porous Winnipeg defence before roofing his eighth on Hellebuyck.
The visitors tied it on their second man advantage at 12:20 when Copp recovered a loose puck and then finished off the sequence by tipping Pionk’s point shot home for his fifth.
But Toronto got that one back when the league’s top-ranked power play connected for the 26th time in 27 games as Matthews, who’s been bothered by a wrist/hand injury and had failed to score in his last five outings, tipped his 19th past Hellebuyck off Rielly’s point shot before the Jets grabbed hold of things in the second.
“That’s a very good team,” Keefe said. “But you either have winning habits or you have losing habits. When you have losing habits, you end up giving up free goals. When you’re not scoring enough (to overcome mistakes), you lose games.
“We’ve got to get back to having consistent, winning habits.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 9, 2021.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — DeMar DeRozan scored 27 points in a record-setting performance and the Sacramento Kings beat the Toronto Raptors 122-107 on Wednesday night.
Domantas Sabonis added 17 points, 13 assists and 11 rebounds for his third triple-double of the season for Sacramento. He shot 6 for 6 from the field and 5 for 5 at the free-throw line.
Keegan Murray chipped in with 22 points and 12 rebounds, and De’Aaron Fox scored 21.
The 35-year-old DeRozan has scored at least 20 points in each of his first eight games with the Kings, breaking a franchise mark established by Chris Webber when he reached 20 in his first seven games with Sacramento in 1999.
DeRozan spent the past three seasons with the Chicago Bulls. The six-time All-Star also has played for Toronto and San Antonio during his 16-year NBA career.
RJ Barrett had 23 points to lead the Raptors. Davion Mitchell scored 20 in his first game in Sacramento since being traded to Toronto last summer.
Takeaways
Raptors: Toronto led for most of the first three quarters before wilting in the fourth. The Raptors were outscored 33-14 in the final period.
Kings: Fox played strong defense but struggled again shooting from the floor as he is dealing with a finger injury. Fox went 5 for 17 and just 2 of 8 on 3-pointers. He is 5 for 25 from beyond the arc in his last three games.
Key moment
The Kings trailed 95-89 early in the fourth before going on a 9-0 run that gave them the lead for good. DeRozan started the spurt with a jumper, and Malik Monk scored the final seven points.
Key stat
Sabonis had the eighth game in the NBA since at least 1982-83 with a triple-double while missing no shots from the field or foul line. The previous player to do it was Josh Giddey for Oklahoma City against Portland on Jan. 11.
Up next
Raptors: At the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night, the third stop on a five-game trip.
VANCOUVER – The Vancouver Whitecaps are one win away from moving on to the next round of the Major League Soccer playoffs.
To get there, however, the Whitecaps will need to pull off the improbable by defeating the powerhouse Los Angeles FC for a second straight game.
Vancouver blanked the visitors 3-0 on Sunday to level their best-of-three first-round playoff series at a game apiece. As the matchup shifts back to California for a decisive Game 3 on Friday, the Whitecaps are looking for a repeat performance, said striker Brian White.
“We take the good and the bad from last game, learn from what we could have done better and go to LAFC with confidence and, obviously, with a whole lot of respect,” he said.
“We know that we can go there and give them a very good fight and hopefully come away with a win.”
The winner of Friday’s game will face the No. 4-seed Seattle Sounders in a one-game Western Conference semifinal on Nov. 23 or 24.
The ‘Caps finished the regular season eighth in the west with a 13-13-8 record and have since surprised many with their post-season play.
First, Vancouver trounced its regional rivals, the Portland Timbers, 5-0 in a wild-card game. Then, the squad dropped a tightly contested 2-1 decision to the top-seeded L.A. before posting a decisive home victory on Sunday.
Vancouver has scored seven goals this post-season, second only to the L.A. Galaxy (nine). Vancouver also leads the league in expected goals (6.84) through the playoffs.
No one outside of the club expected the Whitecaps to win when the Vancouver-L. A. series began, said defender Ranko Veselinovic.
“We’ve shown to ourselves that we can compete with them,” he said.
Now in his fifth season with the ‘Caps, Veselinovic said Friday’s game will be the biggest he’s played for the team.
“We haven’t had much success in the playoffs so, definitely, this is the one that can put our season on another level,” he said.
This is the second year in a row the Whitecaps have faced LAFC in the first round of the playoffs and last year, Vancouver was ousted in two straight games.
The team isn’t thinking about revenge as it prepares for Game 3, White said.
“More importantly than (beating LAFC), we want to get to the next round,” he said. “LAFC’s a very good team. We’ve come up against them a number of times in different competitions and they always seem to get the better of us. So it’d be huge for us to get the better of them this time.”
Earning a win last weekend required slowing L.A.’s transition game and limiting offensive opportunities for the team’s big stars, including Denis Bouanga.
Those factors will be important again on Friday, said Whitecaps head coach Vanni Sartini, who warned that his team could face a different style of game.
“I think the most important thing is going to be to match their intensity at the beginning of the game,” he said. “Because I think they’re going to come at us a million miles per hour.”
The ‘Caps will once again look to captain Ryan Gauld for some offensive firepower. The Scottish attacking midfielder leads MLS in playoff goals with five and has scored in all three of Vancouver’s post-season appearances this year.
Gearing up for another do-or-die matchup is exciting, Gauld said.
“Knowing it’s a winner-takes-all kind of game, being in that kind of environment is nice,” he said. “It’s when you see the best in players.”
LAFC faces the bulk of the pressure heading into the matchup, Sartini said, given the club’s appearances in the last two MLS Cup finals and its 2022 championship title.
“They’re supposed to win and we are not,” the coach said. “But it’s beautiful to have a little bit of pressure on us, too.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
Each PWHL team operated under its city name, with players wearing jerseys featuring the league’s logo in its inaugural season before names and logos were announced last month.
The Toronto Sceptres, Montreal Victoire, Ottawa Charge, Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost and New York Sirens will start the PWHL’s second season on Nov. 30 with jerseys designed to reflect each team’s identity and to be sold to the public as replicas.
Led by PWHL vice-president of brand and marketing Kanan Bhatt-Shah, the league consulted Creative Agency Flower Shop to design the jerseys manufactured by Bauer, the PWHL said Thursday in a statement.
“Players and fans alike have been waiting for this moment and we couldn’t be happier with the six unique looks each team will don moving forward,” said PWHL senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer.
“These jerseys mark the latest evolution in our league’s history, and we can’t wait to see them showcased both on the ice and in the stands.”
Training camps open Tuesday with teams allowed to carry 32 players.
Each team’s 23-player roster, plus three reserves, will be announced Nov. 27.
Each team will play 30 regular-season games, which is six more than the first season.
Minnesota won the first Walter Cup on May 29 by beating Boston three games to two in the championship series.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
