Joel Hofer made 24 saves as the St. Louis Blues beat the Winnipeg Jets 1-0 at Enterprise Center. The Jets have now dropped four straight games on the road and saw their record drop to 15-16-2. Kyle Connor saw his nine-game point streak come to an end, Connor Hellebuyck stopped 25 of 26 Blues shots. The Jets will continue their three-game road trip Friday in Denver when they face the Colorado Avalanche.
SURVIVED THE FIRST
St. Louis has not been kind to the Jets going back to last April where they were outscored 17-5 in their opening round series against the Blues. After some solid scoring chances by Winnipeg, the Blues took over, Robert Thomas hit the goalpost, Pavel Buchnevich rang one off the crossbar. Connor Hellebuyck then made seven consecutive stops, and some were grade A scoring chances. Because of that, the Jets went into the dressing room tied at zero.
GOTTA SCORE FIRST
Coming into Wednesday night, the Jets were 13-4-1 when scoring first but 2-11-1 when the opposition gets on the board first. The game was scoreless in the second period, the Blues forecheck forced a turnover in the Jets corner, Robert Thomas saw Justin Faulk moving into the slot and the Blues defenceman beat Hellebuyck to give St. Louis a 1-0 lead. That goal would hold up as the game winner as Winnipeg would suffer their fourth shutout loss of the season.
“I think our starts haven't been great. Definitely work on that,” said Kyle Connor.
“And it's one shift on, one shift off. It kind of seems like here, so it's been going on for seems like a long time here, almost a month, and it's not the way we want to play, and it's just keep going on. So, we got to find a way to get out of it.”
1,100 GAMES FOR JT
Toews skated in his 1,100th career NHL game on Wednesday against the Blues. Toews became the 27th active player to play in 1,100 NHL games, with both Jeff Skinner and Mikael Backlund doing so as they played in a game against each other on Tuesday night. Toews finished his 1,100th game playing 11:26 and registering one shot on goal and went 81.8% in the faceoff circle.
