Jets goaltender Connor Hellebuyck saw his team blow a 4-1 lead in the third period but couldn't come up with exactly what went wrong over the final 20 minutes and overtime.
"It's tough for me to say because I'm so focused on what I do and making sure that I'm not coming off of it," said Hellebuyck. "Maybe we just kind of came off of it a bit, maybe we were a little tight. But you know what, we'll use it as a learning experience. We still have a winning record (3-2-1) and we're going to continue to build and get better every single day."
The Jets returned to the rink for practice on Wednesday and had a spirited skate for around 40 minutes. While there were lots of battle drills, there were a lot of smiles as well.
"We've been pretty good at resetting ourselves," said Andrew Copp, who recorded his first point (an assist) of the season Tuesday. "I think that's what we did today. We tried to loosen it up, maybe have a little bit of fun today, maybe get back to that good feeling so I think that's been a part of it. Our bench hasn't been as good, so trying to have some fun and get some talk going can be paramount for these next couple of weeks."
Someone who likes to talk on the ice and on the bench is Dustin Byfuglien. The Minnesota product has missed the last two games with an upper-body injury but was skating with his teammates today in a non-contact yellow jersey. Copp was asked if Byfuglien's chatter was something that was missing on the bench lately.
"He's at the other end of the bench," joked Copp. "He says some things, but talk about talking about nothing. That guy talks about nothing. His presence in the room is obviously huge for us. That calming presence on that back end that just makes a lot of solid plays and a guy who handles adversity well."
Last year's success is constantly being brought up and the challenge remains to forget about what happened and realize the grind of another 82-game season is underway. Since the start of the new campaign, head coach Paul Maurice has repeatedly said that this team is different than last year.
"Even if we brought everybody back, it's a brand-new year," said Maurice. "This is a brand-new team and we have to start from zero on some things and that is handling adversity. Dealing with kind of a knockout punch last night and getting up and coming back to work today. That has to be rebuilt. Rebuilt from ground zero with a new group."
Here are the line rushes from Tuesday's practice:
Connor-Scheifele-Wheeler
Ehlers-Little-Laine
Copp-Lowry-Tanev
Lemieux-Roslovic-Perreault
Vesalainen-Tanev
Morrissey-Trouba
Chiarot-Kulikov
Morrow-Myers
Byfuglien
Hellebuyck
Brossoit
ICE CHIPS
Maurice said it's possible Byfuglien plays in the Jets next game tomorrow.
With Vancouver coming in next, Connor Hellebuyck was asked about the Canucks overtime hero in Pittsburgh, Brock Boeser. Boeser finished second in rookie goals behind Kyle Connor last year and he was also the MVP at the All-Star game in Tampa in January. Hellebuyck and Blake Wheeler faced Boeser in the semi-finals with the Pacific Division winning 5-2 over the Central Division.
"Well he's a good guy, I liked him," said Hellebuyck. "I don't know, he sniped on me so I didn't like that. He's a good player, we're going to have to just respect him and continue playing our game and making sure we shut things down in our end."
