Scott Arniel smiled when asked what the mood was as the Winnipeg Jets watched film of their Game 1 playoff loss to the Dallas Stars.
“They probably didn’t like it while they were watching it,” the Jets head coach said of his players, who studied instead of skated Thursday. “But no, there’s meaning behind it.
“We talked about it, they recognize it. We gave up Game 1, we gave up home-ice advantage [Wednesday night]. And I’m not going to be disrespectful of Dallas, but we had a lot to do with that.”
Recognition of what went wrong in Wednesday’s 3-2 loss to open the best-of-seven, second-round series means mistakes can be fixed for Game 2 on Friday.
“I really noticed how much time we had to make plays and we rushed it or we didn’t execute it,” Arniel said. “To me, when we’re on we’re like clockwork.
“We’re working together as five-man units, we’re clean, we’re fast and we weren’t that [Wednesday night].”
Jets captain Adam Lowry also believes improvements can be made to the team that captured the Presidents’ Trophy for having the league’s best regular-season record.
“I think just some tweaks, some things that we looked at [Thursday] and we’ll look at [Friday] — that we can be more effective when we have the puck as opposed to feeding their transition game,” the veteran centre said. “I thought we did a poor job on both blue lines of puck management and really allowing them to get into that transition that they’re so good at.”
Jets forward Nino Niederreiter began Wednesday’s scoring with a goal at the 3:30 mark of the second period. Dallas forward Mikko Rantanen replied, not once, not twice, but three times — becoming the third player in NHL history to record hat tricks in consecutive playoff games. He netted three third-period goals in the Stars’ opening-round Game 7 victory over Colorado.
Top-line centre Mark Scheifele missed games 6 and 7 in Winnipeg’s first-round series win over St. Louis with an upper-body injury. He returned and made it 3-2 late in the second.
Lowry said the Jets have to muscle Rantanen off his game.
“Every chance you can, you have to go through the body,” he said. “You have to slow the game down for him. You have to make him work to get to the open ice.”
The Jets don’t have a do-or-die mentality heading into the next match.
“Obviously, there’s urgency to get the win because you don’t want to be down 2-0,” defenceman Dylan DeMelo said. “But at the end of the day, you don’t win the series after [Friday’s] game.
“You like to get it, obviously be 1-1. There’s going to be urgency from our side to get it done. But, knock on wood, obviously god forbid we lose, we can’t hit the panic button and start freaking out.”
Winnipeg defencemen Josh Morrissey and Logan Stanley skated in regular jerseys Thursday morning, along with other players who didn’t get into Wednesday’s game. Both were injured in Game 7 against the Blues.
Arniel was asked if he was hopeful the veteran Morrissey might return and said he remains a game-time decision.
Morrissey is a key to Winnipeg’s power play, which went 0-for-4 in Game 1.
“If Josh is back then obviously that’s going to be a huge boost for us,” DeMelo said of his top defence partner. “We’ve missed him and we know what he brings to our team.
“So if he’s in, awesome. If he’s not, obviously we’ve just got to continue to step up back there and try to get the job done.”
The Stars had the day off Thursday and only head coach Pete DeBoer spoke to the media at the team’s hotel.
“Any time we can get a day mentally and physically away, I think it’s something that we have to take,” he said.
Veteran defenceman Miro Heiskanen remains day-to-day in his recovery from knee surgery in early February.
“He has a surgeon who did the surgery in New York who has to sign off and he has a part of this, but we’re moving closer on all those things,” DeBoer said.
