Jets end Blues winning streak with shutout victory

WINNIPEG - In their sixth game of the season, the Winnipeg Jets have a blueprint for how they want to look.
Sure, there are always improvements to be made, as players and coaches at the National Hockey League level will always find something to work on.
But Monday's 4-0 shutout victory over the previously unbeaten St. Louis Blues was an effort to be proud of.
"We did a great job of battling, getting from zone to zone to zone, getting to their end of the rink," said associate coach Scott Arniel, in charge of the bench for Rick Bowness who missed the game to get more rest following a bout with COVID-19.
"It wasn't going to be pretty getting it there," Arniel said. "Sometimes it was chipping pucks out, sometimes it was not trying to go east to west through the neutral zone. We were playing north-south hockey. That was a real complete game."

Mark Scheifele, Sam Gagner, Morgan Barron, and Cole Perfetti scored for the Jets in the win, which improved Winnipeg's record to 3-3-0 this season.
In goal, Connor Hellebuyck was solid from start to finish, making 25 saves for his first shutout of the season and 29th of his career.
"This game wasn't going to be won off a couple sweet plays. It was going to be won in the corners and making sure they got nothing," said Hellebuyck.
"It felt like it was a step in the right direction. We know we have it in this room. We needed to show it for 60 minutes. Now that we have, we have something to build on."

It didn't matter what goal the Jets scored on Monday. They were all a by-product of hard work by every player on the ice to maintain possession, grind down the opposition, and bury the opportunity when it came along.
Scheifele broke the dead lock on the scoreboard 10:30 into the second period. He was rewarded for his work below the goal line in the St. Louis zone, protecting the puck along the boards on two occasions before it ultimately got back to Josh Morrissey at the point. Scheifele went to the net, corralled the hard pass from Morrissey, and fluidly tucked it around the extended pad of Thomas Greiss to make it 1-0 Winnipeg.
"Honestly we just made simple plays. We didn't try to do too much. We got the puck behind them, made them turn all night," said Scheifele. "You hate when other teams make you turn and make you go back to your own end every time. We just tried to keep it simple though the neutral zone, get it in deep, and wear them down. It worked as the game went on. That was a good game by our line."

The goal, which was Scheifele's fourth of the season, gives him points in 11 of his last 14 games against St. Louis - and 18 total points during that stretch.
He didn't get an assist on the next tally, but if tertiary assists were ever to be rewarded, it would have been in this instance.
Deep in the Blues' zone, Scheifele fought off checks from Ivan Barbashev and Torey Krug before shovelling the puck down low to a pinching Morrissey. In turn, Morrissey moved it a few feet to Kyle Connor, who quickly found Sam Gagner in the slot for his third of the season. That put the Jets up 2-0 with 9:22 to play.
They built the lead to 3-0 just 3:15 later as Morgan Barron scored on his career-high sixth shot of the game, knocking in a backhand pass from Adam Lowry - who had won a puck battle below the goal line to set up the opportunity.

"The five-on-five game, we knew when we had to get that puck in," said Arniel. "A great example was Barron's goal, chipping that puck in, Lows going in there and playing the body, and us crashing the net. I thought we did a great job tonight of getting to the net, of not playing to the outside, we played a lot more on the inside of the offensive zone and we got rewarded for it."
Perfetti capped off the evening with an empty net goal to extend his career-long point streak to four games.
The win was a great way to wrap up the home stand, and a nice way for the Jets to make their head coach feel a little bit better.
No matter how Bowness felt, his team's performance warranted a quick call to Arniel after the final buzzer.
"We want our lines all to look the same," said Arniel. "I know it sounds odd because of the skill sets of some guys. It's look the same when we're defending. Look the same when we're coming through the neutral zone. Look the same on the forecheck and then offensively, obviously get people to the net. And we were as close to looking that way tonight as we've been all year long."