Winnipeg Looks to Pull Even Atop the North Division Friday Night

Fri, Mar 26, 2021
By Jim Vassallo (Veri.bet Writer)

The Winnipeg Jets (20-11-2, 42 points) visit the Calgary Flames (15-16-3, 33 points) on Friday, March 26, at 10 PM ET.

Winnipeg has 42 points and is just two points out of first behind the North Division leaders, the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Jets have won two in a row. A win in regulation would push the Jets into a virtual tie with the idle Maple Leafs atop the division.

Calgary has just 33 points and is sitting in sixth place in the North, 11 points out of first place. The Flames are in the middle of a three-game losing streak.

These teams haven’t played each other since February 9, which saw the Flames take home a 3-2 win. They will play again Saturday and Monday before playing the final game of the season series on May 5.

The Jets come into tonight’s game having swept a back-to-back with the Vancouver Canucks by scores of 4-0 and 5-1.

Andrew Copp scored four of the five goals for the Jets in the 5-1 victory. It was his first NHL hat trick.

“I’m going to have a hard time remembering my last four-goal game. I don’t know, I don’t know if that’s ever happened before. So it’s a pretty cool experience,” Copp said.

“Obviously, our power play was working again today, and just getting those two at the end were kind of cherries on top.”

Copp now has scored 10 goals this season, with five of them coming in the last three games.

“He’s spent an awful lot of time developing his hands, picking pucks along the boards. Just worked at it and worked at it,” Jets head coach Paul Maurice said.

The fifth goal for the Jets was added by Mark Scheifele. Goalie Connor Hellebuyck turned away 38 shots in the win.

Calgary most recently suffered a 3-1 loss to the Ottawa Senators. The Flames have just two goals in their last three games played.

“That’s just the way the puck possession was, and we weren’t as good on our recovery or our management part of it,” Flames coach Darryl Sutter said. “It’s so easy for everybody to dissect it, but when you’re not scoring, those wee little games within a game are magnified.”

Mark Giordano scored the lone goal for Calgary. Goalie Jacob Markstrom stopped 28 shots in the loss. The Flames went 13 minutes without registering a shot on goal in the third period.

Joakim Nordstrom of Calgary is listed as day-to-day with a lower-body injury. There are no players on the injured list for the Jets.

Despite their losing streak, the Flames are -1.5 favorites over the Jets heading into tonight’s NHL contest. The over-under is set at six total goals. The best bet tonight is to place a wager on the over 6. In the first five games of this series, which Winnipeg leads 3-2, the teams have combined for no less than five goals in each game. The first two games were 4-3 contests with each team winning once.