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As the ultimate whistle sounded on Sunday afternoon, the Winnipeg Jets fell 5-3 to the Buffalo Sabres, opening their four-game homestand with a disappointing loss to a non playoff membership. Mark Scheifele’s aim drought has now stretched to eight video games, and oh boy, he’s proven indicators of struggling not too long ago.
To be truthful, Scheifele hasn’t been fully unproductive, registering 5 assists throughout this stretch. However one thing appears off.
He took two penalties towards Buffalo—one for tripping Connor Clifton within the opening body and one other for tripping Alex Tuch within the third, which led to fellow Manitoban Tyson Kozak extending Buffalo’s result in 3-1.
Jets head bench boss Scott Arniel attributed Scheifele’s struggles to unhealthy luck. “Scheif had a few nearly empty netters that hit a stick, a blade, or no matter,” Arniel mentioned after the sport.
Nevertheless, a deeper dive into Scheifele’s latest play exhibits a noticeable dip in aggressiveness. In comparison with the primary 63 video games of the season, the place he persistently drove to the web, the Kitchener native has been extra passive over the past eight video games. A main instance got here towards Buffalo when Scheifele opted to peel again and search for a go reasonably than drive arduous to the aim. One doable clarification for this alteration in strategy is perhaps the stellar play of Sabres goaltender James Reimer, who was rock-solid towards all pictures that weren’t generated from high-danger areas. This will have led Scheifele to focus extra on establishing wingers Kyle Connor and Gabriel Vilardi reasonably than taking pictures himself.
Scheifele’s high-danger scoring probabilities throughout 5-on-5 play have dropped to 0.75 per recreation throughout this drought, in comparison with 1.11 via the primary 63 video games. Regardless of this hunch, the first-line heart has nonetheless put up 35 targets and 77 factors this season whereas sustaining a +10 ranking. His final aim got here on March sixth in a 4-1 win over the Philadelphia Flyers.
Scheifele can have an opportunity to get again on monitor on Tuesday as Alex Ovechkin and the primary place Washington Capitals come to Canada Life Centre. Puck drop is at 7:00 p.m. and the sport will probably be obtainable to observe on TSN3.
