Three Surprises from the Winnipeg Jets so far this Season
The Winnipeg Jets have had their fair share of surprises so far this season. Here are three surprises from the 2021-2022 Winnipeg Jets.
The holiday season and Christmas are sometimes filled with surprises. At the Christmas break and thirty games into the 2021-2022 season, the Winnipeg Jets have had some surprises this season.
Surprises for a hockey team can either be good or bad. Some good surprises could be a player stepping up and becoming a key figure and contributor to the team or a team that was supposed to be in a rebuild are in playoff position, while some bad surprises can happen when a team that is supposed to be a contender does not live up to those expectations or a star player does not perform to expectations.
Already at this point in the season, there have been some surprises for the Jets. Here are three of them:
3. Eric Comrie
As our site wrote about a few days ago, goaltender Eric Comrie has stepped up in a huge way for the Jets and has been a surprise to many this season.
Coming into this season, Comrie was an inexperienced goaltender at the NHL level. Prior to this season, he had only appeared in eight NHL games, but the Jets decided to take a chance on the twenty-six-year-old and name him as the backup to Connor Hellebuyck.
During each season in the NHL, Comrie never had a goals against average below three and the only time his save percentage was .900 or better was last year when he only appeared in one game.
This decision has paid dividends for Winnipeg as Comrie has posted a 3-2-0 record with a 2.53 goals against average and a .914 save percentage.
Although he has not played often, each time Comrie has started, he has given the Jets a great chance to win.
2. Paul Maurice’s Resignation
Many Jets supporters were calling for the Jets to fire Paul Maurice, but not many people envisioned how Maurice would ultimately leave the Jets.
Maurice was in his ninth season as the Jets head coach and the Jets were at a crossroads. They were out of playoff positioning and had a 13-10-5 record. Winnipeg was extremely inconsistent this season constantly going from a winning streak to a losing streak.
On Friday morning, December 17, before the Jets matchup against the Washington Capitals, Maurice held a press conference where he announced his resignation as head coach.
Maurice said that he resigned because the Jets “needed a new voice” and “They need somebody to help them get to that next place.”
There is something to be admired about what Maurice did. He resigned for the best interests of the Jets and knew it was time for someone else to take over.
This announcement shocked many and was a huge surprise. Many people believed that Maurice would either be fired if the Jets continued their struggles this season or he would mutually end his tenure with the Jets at the end of this season rather than in mid-December.
1. The Jets Penalty Kill
Last season the Jets had an average penalty kill compared to the rest of the NHL. In the 2021 season, the team had an 80.5% success rate and was ranked twelfth-best in the league and had a 79.2% in their eight games during the postseason, but this year has been a completely different story for the Jets.
This season, the Jets currently have the third-worst penalty kill in the NHL and their success rate is 70.6%. Winnipeg has been shorthanded 85 times and has gotten scored on 25 times.
This is a surprising stat for the Jets. Currently, their kill is ten percentage points worse than all of last year.
The Jets have some formidable penalty killers that include the likes of Adam Lowry, Andrew Copp, and Paul Stastny on forward and Brenden Dillon, Logan Stanley, Neal Pionk, and Dylan DeMelo on defense.
There is also plenty of time for the Jets to change this poor statistic and it will be interesting to see if and how the penalty kill changes now that Dave Lowry is the head coach. Oddly enough, the Jets have been perfect on the kill since Lowry took the helm, successfully killing all five penalties they have taken in the two games.
Winnipeg Jets Fans: What do you think is the biggest surprise of the season for the Winnipeg Jets? Leave your comments below!
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*All Stats Provided by the NHL*