After Paul Maurice resigned as head coach of the Winnipeg Jets on December 17, ending a seven-year run with the team that saw them make the playoffs five times, assistant coach Dave Lowry took over the reins.
Lowry notched his first win with the organization two days later with a 4–2 victory over the St. Louis Blues.
“Feels great,” said Lowry after the game. “I thought our guys played an outstanding game tonight, competed and did everything that we wanted to do. I think we realized the importance of the game. Obviously being a division game, where we are in the standings, and the week that we have lying ahead of us, we knew that we have to play a certain way to give ourselves a chance to win, and we were able to do that tonight.”
Paul Stastny scored a pair of goals and notched his five hundredth career NHL assist for a three-point effort.
“It’s nice to get it,” said Stastny of the benchmark stat. “It was a big game. It was a big win for us. I think something that we needed big-time.”
His linemates Ehlers and Scheifele finished off the rest of the scoring. Ehlers had a goal and three assists while Scheifele ended up with one goal and one assist.
The game will be Winnipeg’s last for a while. Tuesday’s game against Nashville and Wednesday’s game against Dallas have been postposed after the NHL announced that teams will not be able to cross the border to play starting Monday, December 20 and extended until the beginning of the holiday break on December 23 due to rising COVID-19 cases in the league.
“Due to the concern about cross-border travel and, given the fluid nature of federal travel restrictions, effective on Monday all games involving a Canadian-based team playing a U.S.-based team [from December 20 to the holiday break] will be postponed and rescheduled,” read a joint statement from the league and the players association.
The extra days off are not ideal for the Jets after the victory, but coach Lowry views it as an opportunity.
“This will take us out of it for a couple of days,” said Lowry. “But what it will allow us to do is get back and work on some details in our game that we hope to continue to improve on.”
