The Utah Hockey Club is preparing for its toughest test yet: the first-place Winnipeg Jets.
Utah HC plays in Winnipeg on Tuesday. Winnipeg is notoriously one of the coldest cities in Canada in the winter, so the team will be glad to make that trip before winter really hits.
I have to start by saying that the Jets are making me look like a fool. I predicted them to miss the playoffs, with Utah HC taking their place. Contrary to my preseason musings, if the playoffs were to start right now, the Jets would win the Presidents’ Trophy and Utah HC would miss the playoffs.
That said, my prediction that Alex Ovechkin would break Wayne Gretzky’s scoring record is looking good so far.
Anyway, let’s get back to the matter at hand.
Game at a glance: Utah Hockey Club vs. Winnipeg Jets
The Jets have only lost one game this season. They have scored six or more goals in six games and their goaltending is some of the best in the league. They’re the team to beat.
Kyle Connor leads the Jets in points with 19. That puts him in seventh place in the league. He’s also on a 12-game point streak.
Connor has long been thought of as one of the most underrated players in the NHL, though the more seasons he has like this one, the more properly rated he becomes.
Also of note is Nikolaj Ehlers, who made NHL history Sunday by becoming the highest-scoring Danish player in NHL history with his 474th point.
It’s Scott Arniel’s first season as the full-time head coach of the Jets, and his record of 11-1-0 has him as the early frontrunner for the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year. That’s a lot better than his last stint as an NHL head coach, when he went 45-60-18 over a season and a half behind the Columbus Blue Jackets’ bench.
Reigning Vezina Trophy winner Connor Hellebuyck has a chance to become the first back-to-back recipient of the award since Martin Brodeur did it in 2008. He is among the top goalies in every major statistical category: goals-against average, save percentage, wins and shutouts.
While nothing has been released yet, it’s very possible that Jets backup goaltender Eric Comrie starts on Tuesday. They have played every other day since the second week of the season and Hellebuyck has played all but three of those games.
The Jets will want to rest Hellebuyck where they can, and they might see Tuesday’s game as an opportunity to do that.
Utah Hockey Club’s key to success against Jets
One major factor plays to Utah HC’s advantage against the Jets: shot locations.
Head coach André Tourigny emphasizes almost every day the importance of getting pucks to the inside before shooting, rather than firing shots from low-percentage areas. Almost all of Utah’s shots come from below the hash marks, and those seem to be the only shots to have gotten past Hellebuyck this year.
Because Utah HC doesn’t shoot from outside the slot much, its shot totals have been pretty low in a number of games this season. But anyone who knows hockey will tell you that UHC would rather have one shot from a good area than three shots from distance — quality over quantity.
This is reflected in shooting percentage. Utah HC is currently 11.78% in that category, which makes them the 10th-most efficient team in the league. That being said, the Jets are the most efficient team in the league with a shooting percentage of 15.21%, so Utah’s goaltender will have to be sharp, too.
So, Utah HC’s key to success against the Jets will be to continue shooting from high-percentage areas, as that’s the only way to consistently beat Connor Hellebuyck.
Winnipeg Jets team history
In a roundabout way, some people think of the Jets as part of Utah HC’s history. The original iteration of the Jets moved to Arizona in 1996, where they became the Phoenix Coyotes (they’d later become the Arizona Coyotes). You’re already aware that the Coyotes moved to Utah this season.
Here’s the tricky thing, though: These are actually three different franchises. Utah HC was officially labeled an expansion franchise, while the Coyotes became a dormant franchise. The current version of the Jets has no actual ties to the original version — their history comes from the Atlanta Thrashers, who moved to Winnipeg in 2011.
Yep, it’s confusing.
Neither version of the Jets, their predecessors or their successors have ever won the Stanley Cup. The current Jets’ best season was 2018, when they lost in the Conference Final to the Vegas Golden Knights.
They had a rather disappointing playoff run last season, losing in five games in the first round to the Colorado Avalanche. Despite being one vote shy of a consensus Vezina Trophy winner in the regular season, Hellebuyck couldn’t have stopped a beach ball in the playoffs. He allowed no less than five goals in any postseason game last year.
The Jets are set to prove that last year’s playoffs were nothing more than an anomaly.
Where to watch Utah Hockey Club vs. Winnipeg Jets
The game will be available on both Utah HC+ and Utah 16. It starts at 6 p.m. MST.