{"id":541403,"date":"2026-04-05T03:21:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T03:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/541403\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T03:21:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T03:21:12","slug":"connor-jets-defeat-blue-jackets-to-gain-ground-in-wild-card-race-in-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/541403\/","title":{"rendered":"Connor, Jets defeat Blue Jackets to gain ground in wild-card race in West"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scheifele assisted both Connor goals, and Connor Hellebuyck<\/a>\u00a0made 15 saves for the Jets (33-31-12), who have won five of seven and are 7-3-2 in the past 12 games.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Winnipeg has moved three points out of the second wild-card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Western Conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just speaks to a bit of the maturity of the group and focusing on us and how we need to play and not really worrying about too much outside noise,\u201d Connor said. \u201cObviously, looking at the standings, we\u2019re going to need some help and but that’s something that we can’t be praying on. We\u2019ve got to do our job here and we take care of points.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ivan Provorov<\/a> scored and Jet Greaves<\/a>\u00a0made 23 saves for the Blue Jackets (38-27-12), who have lost six straight games (0-5-1) and are 1-6-1 in their past eight. Columbus is tied with the Detroit Red Wings, Ottawa Senators, and Philadelphia Flyers for the second wild-card spot out of the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n

The Blue Jackets held a players\u2019 meeting afterward and kept the locker room closed for 24 minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ll just keep our conversation in here because we’re a better team than what we’ve shown and just talked about it,\u201d Blue Jackets defenseman Zach Werenski<\/a>\u00a0said. \u201cWe’re not eliminated. We’re still in it and I believe in this group. I believe we can get it done and it’s just doing it. I mean, we did it for two months.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last two weeks obviously haven’t gone our way, but it’s in the room and it’s on us to just pull it out and get it done. But, it starts with one game at a time. We can’t worry about what other teams do or whoever we have after Detroit (at the Red Wings on Tuesday). Our focus just has to be on Detroit, and after that we’ll figure it out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Provorov made it 1-0 at 1:17 of the first period on the Blue Jackets\u2019 first shot of the game when Mason Marchment<\/a>\u00a0pushed Winnipeg defenseman Dylan Samberg<\/a>\u00a0off the puck and fed Provorov from below the goal line as the defenseman was coming down the slot.<\/p>\n

Connor tied it 1-1 at 18:14 of the second period. He was in the right circle when he passed down to Scheifele, then skated toward the net and took the return pass before shooting to the far side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scheifele assisted both Connor goals, and Connor Hellebuyck\u00a0made 15 saves for the Jets (33-31-12), who have won five…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5121],"tags":[5,78,4,77,18,5288],"class_list":{"0":"post-541403","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-winnipeg-jets","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-jets","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-winnipeg","12":"tag-winnipeg-jets","13":"tag-winnipegjets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116349952590386460","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}