Jets "not ready to play" in loss to Bruins

BOSTON, Mass. - "We weren't ready to play."
That was Blake Wheeler, Adam Lowry, Michael Hutchinson and Head Coach Paul Maurice's combined, and rather succinct, evaluation of Saturday's lopsided contest at TD Garden.
"I've got two jobs," Maurice continued. "One is to prepare my hockey team, the other is to run a bench. That's on me. I didn't see it coming. Couldn't make enough adjustments to make it change. Couldn't hide people on the ice enough to keep them off the minus sheet. I'm not looking at that room. I'm looking at how I can get this hockey team ready because that wasn't good enough for this league."
The Bruins ran roughshod on the Jets all night, outshooting the visitors 38-12 and in the process, using second-period goals by Matt Beleskey, Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron to help them to a 4-1 win.

Tim Schaller scored the other for the Bruins early in the third and Adam Lowry found the net late for the Jets.
The Jets are now 0-2 on their season-long five-game road trip and will look to get back on track tomorrow in Carolina (4:00pm CT, TSN3).

"There isn't a piece of that game we were good at," Maurice said. "If we have to sit here today and get a silver lining, if you're going to be bad, you might as well be bad in all parts so that you have a hope you can write that one off.
"We weren't ready to play - (both) the game of hockey and we weren't ready to play the Boston Bruins' style of game, knowing what they were going to do and how they were going to play.
"I'm not reading them the riot act. I've got to get my act together and get them ready to play (tomorrow)."
Beleskey opened the scoring for the Bruins at 2:01 of the second period. Joe Morrow won a battle in the corner and centered the puck out front to the former Duck, who made no mistake from the near hash, cracking a one-timer over Hutchinson's right shoulder.
The Bruins had the first five shots of the period before a penalty settled the pace. The Jets were unable to score on the ensuing power play (Rask may have played a part in that, robbing Wheeler on the doorstep), but afterward, for the first time all night, they had their opponent pinned in their own end for consecutive shifts.
But that little bit of pressure did little to quell to the Bruins' appetite.
Marchand put them up by two with a pretty goal - his team-leading 17th point of the campaign - at 11:37. Taking a bank pass down the near side, Marchand sped past the defence, cut to the net and buried a backhander after almost losing the handle in tight.
Bergeron rounded out the scoring in the middle frame at the tail end of a 5-on-3, launching a one-timer from the top of the near circle short side on Hutchinson to put the Bruins ahead three-nil.
The Jets went the final 13:48 of the second period without getting a shot on goal. Overall, they had only seven after 40 minutes of play.
The Bruins took a 4-0 lead at 1:41 of the third as Schaller snuck behind the defence and fired a shot top shelf on Hutchinson to score his third of the year.
The Jets got their first shot of the period six-and-a-half minutes in - more than a full period (20:18) since their last attempt on goal.

"Our effort's been pretty good all year," Wheeler said. "We view this as an outlier. Our challenge is figuring out what went wrong and trying not to duplicate it tomorrow."
The Jets were sluggish out of the gate, as they were all night, conceding 14 shots and turning the puck over five times in a panicky opening period dominated by the Bruins.
Back-to-back penalties to Wheeler and Dustin Byfuglien gave the Bruins a 34-second 5-on-3 midway through the period. The Bruins had considerable offensive-zone time, recording five shots on the extended power play, but the Jets came up with a mammoth effort on the penalty kill to keep the game scoreless.
That was the lone positive in an otherwise forgettable evening.
"We've got to figure out what we didn't do right tonight," Wheeler said. "Our preparation has been good all year. That's the great thing about this league is that we've got another chance at it tomorrow."
- Ryan Dittrick, WinnipegJets.com