Jets looking ahead after Game 2 loss to Golden Knights

WINNIPEG -- The Winnipeg Jets were more focused on moving on than picking apart the details after a 3-1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 2 of the Western Conference Final at Bell MTS Place on Monday.

The Jets fell behind 2-0 in the first period. It was the fourth time in 14 games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs they trailed after the first. They've lost all but one of those games, the exception being a 7-4 victory after the Nashville Predators got out to a 3-0 lead in Game 3 of the second round.
"We were chasing the game again," captain Blake Wheeler said. "Down 2-0 just made it tough. It didn't feel like playing against Nashville. But those guys do a good job in their own right. We just couldn't get any momentum going."
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As a result, the best-of-7 series is tied 1-1 with Game 3 at Vegas on Wednesday (9 p.m. ET; NBCSN, CBC, SN, TVAS).
Jets center Bryan Little said the seven-game series against the Predators taught them to look ahead.
"You put the losses behind you as quick as you can," he said. "Everything seems so life-and-death. With wins you're on top of the world one day, and after losses it seems like the end of the world and there are no messages on your phone after games.
"You've got to try to stay level-headed and we learned that lesson in the Nashville series because that was a very up-and-down series. We're not happy with the result tonight and we know we can fix some things, but at the same time, we're putting it behind us and getting ready for a road trip."
Uncharacteristically, the Jets were burned for two goals off odd-man rushes in the 3-1 loss.
Vegas forward Jonathan Marchessault scored each, making it 2-0 at 17:22 of the first period and 3-1 at 8:45 of the third, 1:28 after Winnipeg's Kyle Connor had cut the margin to 2-1 with a power-play goal.

"They made us pay for sure," Little said. "But other than that, it's not like they were getting 3-on-2s and 2-on-1s the rest of the night. Those breakdowns were pretty much it, but they cost us."
Once Tomas Tatar gave the Golden Knights a 1-0 lead 13:23 into the game, the Jets wandered to an out-of-sync attack for too long, coach Paul Maurice said.
"We really got out of our routes and our patience at that point," he said. "I liked our first 10 minutes. The way the game was played after, we got control of it (but) can't get it clean. In part you have to give them credit: real good sticks on the puck, real hard. We didn't feel we started poorly at all. We didn't do a whole lot of clean things with the puck, but they were good. They were on the puck and didn't make it easy."
One of Winnipeg's strengths this season was remaining patient no matter how a game was moving along or what the score was. It was one of the biggest improvements of 2017-18 after impatience in those areas were its Achilles' heel last season, when it missed the playoffs.
"The (issue) that cost us, I think, is that we pushed too early, got out of our routes too early," Maurice said. "Then the second piece of that was what I'd said earlier, is that we didn't do anything clean, we didn't do anything quickly. That part, I think, was true of the whole game, and we want to be better there."
The Jets won 4-2 in Game 1 thanks to a quick start and some snappy execution for a 3-0 first-period lead. Along with some impatience, another difference in Game 2 was a sharper performance from the Golden Knights.
"We knew they were going to come out faster; I don't think anybody in here minded our start," defenseman Jacob Trouba said. "We liked it. We had some good chances, they capitalized on theirs. We knew they were going to be faster and that there would be more battles, and that's kind of where the game was different."

The Jets had more shots on goal in Game 2 but fewer clean looks against goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, who made 30 saves after making 22 in Game 1.
"I think they were a bit sharper," said Little, who had four shots on goal. "I think they gave up less quality chances. I thought the first game, I felt like we had more (odd-man) rushes. We had two 3-on-1s, and we haven't seen that much all playoffs, let alone one game. So they did a better job of kind of limiting our odd-man rushes and quality chances."
In their back-and-forth series against the Predators, the Jets learned that momentum was a factor within games but rarely from game to game. Winnipeg and Nashville alternated wins Game 1 through Game 7.
So although moving on is essential, the momentum lesson is ongoing for a team that made the playoffs one other time (2015) in the seven seasons since relocating to Winnipeg from Atlanta in 2011.
"There's going to be moments in this series where they get scoring chances," Wheeler said. "They're going to create some momentum and put the puck in the net. It's just a matter of how you react to it."