WINNIPEG — Adam Lowry knew and the rest of us did not know.
Somewhere in the eternity that passed as his third-period shot bounced off of the left post, and then the right, and then the left post one more agonizing time, we had the chance to reflect.
When exactly did it become obvious that Game 1 between the 110-point Winnipeg Jets and 107-point Colorado Avalanche was going to be quite this absurd?
Advertisem*nt
Canada Life Centre is a chest-pounding, eardrum-splitting place to play a playoff game but, one game into the Stanley Cup playoffs, this barn has been burnt. Scorched. The roof is on fire and only 60 minutes have been played. Winnipeg and Colorado combined for 13 goals for the first 7-6 playoff game since 2006 and the first one in regulation since 1985.
It’s enough to make a person question a lot of their assumptions about a first-round series. For example: If the best defensive team of the regular season gives up six goals, with Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen and Cale Makar combining for seven points, how does it go on to win?
How does a player without a stick make a massive play to set up one of the game’s biggest goals? Where did this board-rattling, forecheck-dominating version of Kyle Connor come from — the one who positively erased Casey Mittelstadt on the way to Mark Scheifele’s first-period goal?
Why did Colorado keep Alexandar Georgiev in the net at all, given his .696 save percentage on the night? (We know the answer to this one: Justus Annunen was sick and, absurdly enough, former Jets goaltending prospect Arvid Holm suited up for the Avalanche as their backup.)
All of that ground and more is worth covering as the Jets’ 7-6 win — and the sold-out Canada Life Centre crowd’s response to it — keeps ringing in our ears and reverberating through our chests.
There was Lowry throwing Rantanen to the ice, picking up Mason Appleton’s pass, driving through MacKinnon on his way to the net and taking a shot off the left post that zig-zagged from one post to another through time and space — through the raucous whiteout crowd, the women in wedding dresses, the CF-18 pregame flyover and the Hoosli Ukrainian Male Chorus — then hit the first post again and was somehow declared a goal.
Advertisem*nt
MacKinnon cleared the puck but Lowry celebrated — certain of what he saw through the chaos of the roaring crowd and the frenetic pace of a hockey game that gave us six goals and three lead changes in its opening 15 minutes.
How did he know?
“Honestly, from my angle (on the ice) I felt like I could see a piece of white,” Lowry said after the game. “But looking at the replay now, I’m like, ‘Why was I so confident?'”
“Our video guys had it up right away,” Connor explained. “It was pretty quick and we all started celebrating pretty quick. That’s when Adam saw the bench all excited. You can see the puck kind of turns on its side.”
“We looked down and I see this puck rolling on its edge inside the line … ‘OK. It’s in.'” Rick Bowness said. “Take it and run.”
It’s a lesson that could be applied to the game at large.
It’s hard to know what to believe after a 7-6 game with so much chaos in it — a coach’s nightmare, with Bowness more concerned about puck management than appreciative of all of the speed, mistakes and skill. The first period was a goal fest, with consecutively successful breakout passes something of a unicorn for both teams. The turnovers piled up and so did the unsavable scoring chances at both ends of the ice.
There was Valeri Nichushkin picking a perfect corner, a loud “ping!” emanating from the spot where the crossbar meets the post after Josh Manson expertly turned Neal Pionk’s missed stretch pass toward Gabriel Vilardi into a dangerous counterattack. Winnipeg’s first sustained zone time led to Josh Morrissey’s equalizer, but then came a long run of mistakes.
Alex Iafallo got a piece of Manson’s breakout pass, which lead to Vladislav Namestnikov diving into a slap shot that rocketed past Georgiev for a 2-1 Jets lead. Dylan Samberg tried to break the puck out through Winnipeg’s crease, leading to a giveaway and Miles Wood’s 2-2 crease-crasher. A failed Jets breakout effort led to MacKinnon’s first goal of the playoffs, with the added chaos of a deflection off Dylan DeMelo’s stick.
And then there was Connor, who gives up 12 pounds to Mittelstadt, finishing his check and leading to Scheifele’s tap-in.
That Vilardi pass pic.twitter.com/T6r75gaBMa
— Shayna (@hayyyshayyy) April 21, 2024
Connor finished the night with two goals and one assist and his line with Scheifele and Vilardi won their minutes 3-1 at five-on-five.
He wasn’t thrilled with the style of play so much as grateful for the win.
“It’s not the way we drew it up, a 7-6 game, but sometimes you’ve just got to play that game that’s in front of you,” Connor said. “It turned into a bit of a track meet there and we know we’ve got to be better.”
Advertisem*nt
If they didn’t draw this game up, someone did. The first-period chaos gave way to second-period Jets fortune. When Nino Niederreiter’s stick exploded on a shot block, he stayed in the play, running a desperate, lunging pick on Makar that sprung Lowry for his first goal of the night. It could have been a penalty; instead, it was a savvy, veteran play.
Lowry’s shot for the 5-3 goal hit Georgiev’s skate, the left post, the right post and the left post again, and then crossed the line — just like Lowry said it did.
But that wasn’t the end of the script.
Winnipeg went ahead 6-3 in the third period when Connor blasted an 81-mile-per-hour one-timer past Georgiev to match the No. 81 on his jersey. Artturi Lehkonen pulled one back for Colorado, just to prove our series previewright, and then Winnipeg caught another break: Connor scored again, making it 7-4 on a play that was either onside by the slimmest margin or offside but uncaught by Colorado.
Suddenly the pair of Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18 Hornet fighter jets that flew over the arena shortly after Hoosli sang the anthems weren’t the loudest rumble of the night. That came from the fans, chanting “Pull the goalie!” and reminding us Canada Life Centre is unmatched at its peak.
Winnipeg is at the very top of the list of places in which I want to cover a playoff game. That rink already has one of the best atmospheres in the league in the regular season. Even on TV, you can tell how it goes nuclear in the playoffs.
— Mark Lazerus (@MarkLazerus) April 21, 2024
But then Colorado scored a power-play goal and didpull its goalie — and scored again. The Jets scored seven goals on Georgiev, the Avalanche didn’t want to trust their net to Holm, and somehow Winnipeg was still holding on with 30 seconds left in the game. It worked and the Jets won, earning their first playoff win in front of a full-capacity crowd since Game 1 of the Western Conference final in 2018.
Did the how of it make sense to anyone? Even the Jets? (It did not.)
Advertisem*nt
“We were riding the same roller coaster everybody else was,” said Brenden Dillon.
“I don’t think Bones is going to be preaching 7-6,” Lowry said. “Maybe a little nervous energy, we were excited getting the whiteout and having home ice and getting to play in front of our fans.”
It’s possible to take a sober, more analytical look at what went wrong. Winnipeg’s puck management was sloppy, particularly in the first period, and Colorado made the Jets pay for their giveaways on Nichushkin’s and Wood’s goals. The Avalanche are also an elite zone entry team, with players like MacKinnon and Rantanen who can gain the zone and then protect the puck until the next wave of offence comes.
“I think we’ve got to do a better job just staying on top of their speed. They come through the neutral zone so well. They have an active back end and they generate a lot there,” Lowry said. “F3 got caught a few times, pucks inside the blue line, ours and theirs. It gave them some of those chances that are a little uncharacteristic for our group.”
Again, this echoes a chief concern for the Jets, as we identified in our preview.
Rantanen’s pass to MacKinnon for his goal came after Makar stuffed a Jets zone exit, but it showed perfect patience. There is also the matter of Winnipeg’s penalty kill, which continues to give up shots for free from the outsides while struggling to box out its opponents or clear the puck when the time comes.
The Jets are up 1-0 in the series but have a lot of things to work on.
“Listen, we’ll never complain about a win, especially this time of year,” Bowness said. “We’re very happy to get that win and understanding that there’s areas we’re going to be better and we will. There are things we’re going to clean up. It wasn’t exactly how we drew it up, but if that’s the way it goes, that’s the way it goes. Their top guys took over, our top guys took over. It was just the type of game that it evolved into and you play it out and we found a way to get the win. So, we’ll take it.”
Can't help but wonder what this game would look like if Jake Allen were playing for the Avs instead of sitting in a TV studio in Toronto.
— Arpon Basu (@ArponBasu) April 22, 2024
Asked to specify, Bowness pointed to the same thing Lowry did. Winnipeg routinely got burned by Colorado’s speed on Sunday night. Part of that is inevitable and the Jets understand that. There was a third-period rush from MacKinnon around DeMelo that most players are powerless to stop. But a big part of what kick-started Colorado’s speed came for free on Jets giveaways. The Avalanche doubled Winnipeg in shots by a count of 46-23, and if Georgiev or Annunen can find good form or good health, the Jets are going to need to elevate their game by miles to keep beating Colorado.
Advertisem*nt
Sometimes the hockey gods smile on a team. The Jets have an almost complete bill of health, whereas the Avalanche lost Jonathan Drouin to injury and Annunen to illness. Video review vindicated Lowry’s goal, even if Lowry himself is second-guessing how certain he was that he scored.
But a 1-0 lead in a series this close is a big deal, particularly with Connor Hellebuyck the most likely goalie to bounce back with an elite performance.
Add in the playoff version of Lowry, who’s scored six goals in his last six postseason games while matching up against the opposition’s best, and I think it would be perfectly valid for Jets fans to look past the absurdity and at the opportunity in front of Winnipeg — right here, right now. These Jets have a 1-0 lead on the 2022 Stanley Cup champions and are as hungry as they’ve ever been and Lowry is one of many players leading the way.
“That’s our captain, man. He’s a gamer. The physicality, he plays against the top guys every night,” Dillon said. “Sometimes when it seems like our group doesn’t have it, he’s able to pull us into the fight.”
This young @NHLJets fan's reaction to receiving a puck is so awesome. ❤️
The crowd cheering makes it even better. #StanleyCup
(🎥: @ICdave) pic.twitter.com/wo1quBGvhd
— NHL (@NHL) April 22, 2024
(Photo of Adam Lowry celebrating his second-period goal in Game 1: David Lipnowski / Getty Images)
