Belief still high as Jets enter Game 4 trailing series 2-1

LAS VEGAS, Nevada - As Paul Stastny described it following a team meeting Thursday at T-Mobile Arena: "Today is a new day."
Indeed, the Winnipeg Jets find themselves trailing a series for the first time in these playoffs, but there's a long way to go and in his mind, there's no sense in dwelling on what they can't change now.
It's time to move forward.

The Jets have manufactured only seven goals through the first three games of the series, but it isn't for a lack of trying. The red-hot Marc-Andre Fleury, who now has 10 wins and a preposterous .945 save percentage amid this once-improbable inaugural spring season, has been Vegas' backbone, steering them to a 4-2 victory in Game 3 Wednesday Sin City.
Stastny, Dustin Byfuglien, Patrik Laine, Adam Lowry and Head Coach Paul Maurice all spoke to reporters on Thursday, each fielding the same question about how the Jets can make life more difficult on the Vegas netminder and find the back of the net more often.

The fact is, there isn't any panic when it comes to this team's ability to produce offence. If it wasn't for Fleury's masterful, 33-save effort - including 15 during a furious third-period push - the narrative looks a lot different than it does today on the heels of their second straight loss, and now, a 2-1 series deficit in the Western Conference Final.
"If we get the same chances as we did [in Game 3], some of those are going to go in," Stastny, who was robbed on the doorstep during a second-period power play, just moments after Laine rattled one off the blocker-side post, said during Thursday's press conference. "(Fleury) made some saves, two off his toe, one off (Byfuglien), one off (Scheifele)… If we keep creating those chances, keep creating that havoc, those second- and third-chance opportunities are going to go in."
The Jets outshot the Golden Knights 32-15 in the final 40 minutes and have the edge, 5-on-5, in just about every statistical category so far, but Fleury's otherworldly performances have kept the league's best offence at bay. That doesn't mean the Jets are content with what transpired Wednesday, but with three games under their belt now and a dominant final two periods in Game 3 to learn from, they're approaching a pivotal Game 4 Friday with a better understanding of how to attack.

Indeed, the chances have been there. But as everyone - especially one with more than two decades of experience behind the bench knows - life in a seven-game series is fleeting.
"I've watched a lot of very good teams say, 'We've just got to bury our chances and we win the game,'" Maurice said. "That's a dangerous thing to be selling here or in my locker room, but we liked what we had and we think the quality of it has increased."
The Jets have overcome their fair share of adversity all year, from losing their No. 1 centre, Mark Scheifele, for a good chunk of the campaign, to the unheard-of number of concussions and other ailments backup goalies Michael Hutchinson and Steve Mason have suffered and bounced back from.
Now, having lost back-to-back games for the first time in over two months, they'll have to respond and snap the skid right now, or they'll be heading back to Winnipeg for Game 5 facing elimination.
"If you face enough (adversity), you just get good at it," Maurice said. "It starts with the number of injuries that we faced all year and didn't miss a beat; played pretty strongly through it. Everybody has some big, big nights where you score an awful lot of goals, but so much of the hockey that we played this year was pretty tight. … You had to be focused, you had to be right in those games to win them. We got pretty good at it."
In order for the Jets to overcome it again this time and head back home in a 2-2 tie, they'll have to limit the miscues that have turned short periods of game clock into those big, game-changing moments.

On Wednesday, it was James Neal's goal - made possible by the hard-charging Eric Haula, who intercepted a Connor Hellebuyck play up the wall - that turned the tide, giving the Golden Knights a 2-1 lead just 12 seconds after Mark Scheifele and the Jets had worked so hard to even things up midway through the second period.
Twelve seconds. That's all it took.
The Jets have no interest in letting that happen again.
"We have a lot of belief in our group," Lowry said. "If you look at the depth of our team, a lot of different guys step up at different times. We haven't been able to go on these long losing streaks and we've been able to stop them. You look at the games we've played and obviously we didn't like our start last night, but if you look at the third period, that's more of the template of how our team needs to play to be successful. I know it's a disappointing loss, but if you can take some positives out of it, you can usually go into the next game feeling confident. We have a lot of belief in here and that's why we've been able to bounce back so well."
If we can take anything from these Jets over the past eight months, and especially here in the playoffs, it's this.
We'll see their best on Friday.