Winnipeg Jets drop fiercely bitter playoff opener to St. Louis Blues

It only took 34 seconds for the hostility to show.

The Winnipeg Jets and St. Louis Blues have never been mistaken as being pals. Their matchups are consistently chippy and charged.

But on Wednesday, as they met in Game 1 of their 2019 NHL Stanley Cup playoffs first-round series, it was also the Jets fans who voiced their contempt from the start until the bitter end of a 2-1 loss for their team.

Mark Scheifele was cutting tight around the Blues net at the half-minute mark of the opening period when he collided with Blues goalie Jordan Binnington, drawing an interference penalty and an assortment of fists from Binnington's incensed teammates.

But it elicited a booming chorus of cheers from the whiteout crowd inside Bell MTS Place, which was clearly anti-Binnington.

Every time the 25-year-old rookie touched the puck, the chorus would thunder through the arena once again.

The jeering was in response to tweets he made about women in burkas and a taxi driver speaking a foreign language. The derogatory comments were made years earlier but surfaced in a story on Tuesday.

Following a morning skate in Winnipeg on Wednesday, he said his tweets were the sarcastic jokes of a teenager.

But Jets fans made certain the tender from Ontario wasn't going to get off the hook that easy.

"You know what? You're coming into our home, into our house, so suck it up," fan Sandy Tolman said after the game.

"We're going to get it too, down there in St. Louis for sure."

"You gotta boo somebody so it might as well be him," added Sean Czarkowski, dressed in full Star Wars stormtrooper gear.

And when Jets sniper Patrik Laine ripped a wrist shot past Binnington with 6 ½ minutes left in the first period, the crowd exploded, sending the decibel level to 109.1.

It spiked again when Dustin Byfuglien saved a goal, swatting away a trickling puck that squeaked through Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck's pads on a partial breakaway by the Blues' Vladimir Tarasenko.

Every crushing hit was also met with enthusiasm and there were a lot — 37 between the teams after two periods, 24 of those for the Jets. The final tally was 57 hits, with 36 of those delivered by Winnipeg.

Despite the lack of scoring, the fans never went silent. Never let off the gas on the Binnington boos.

But they were desperate for some breathing space, gasping at every chance the Jets had.

Laine, who torched the Blues for five goals when the teams met back in November, almost provided that relief but was left shaking his head on the bench after ringing a wrister off the post in the third period.

Not long afterwards, that space evaporated when David Perron snapped one past Hellebuyck.

With just over two minutes to go, the Blues' Tyler Bozak sent in the winner. 

Despite a late flurry that saw Binnington make a pair of brilliant saves, including a spectacular stretch to deny a one-timer from Scheifele with 14 seconds remaining, the Jets couldn't pull even to force overtime.

"They came out for two periods just fighting, they were playing really well, and then just … wait and see if the game comes to us. They never make it easy on themselves," said Tolman, dressed in a white Jets hat and long white wig.

"They just kind of let it go and it's just like, come on you guys," she said, then gritted her teeth and growled. "They're a better team and they deserved to win. Grr, I'm gonna kill them.

"Do they want it bad enough? They do, I know they do. Our city does."

In spite of her frustrations, Tolman predicts the Jets will still take the series.

"We'll win this in six games. You watch. They will win."

That sentiment was a consistent one in the afterglow of the game.

"It really was just down to bad luck and a couple of bad bounces. But it's only one game of a seven game series," said Czarkowski. "I think they'll come out and win the next one."

"The fellas outplayed them tonight but they might have let up just a bit at the end, but it's only going to get better and better as we go. I think the boys take the next four [games]," said Kevin Luptak.

• More on the Winnipeg Jets playoff run

We meet again

As they did in Game 1 of the playoffs, the Jets and Blues met to open the 2018-19 NHL regular season on Oct. 4.

From there, they promptly went in polar opposite directions.

After a 5-1 win, the Jets climbed their way through the league standings, while the Blues spiraled downwards. The loss was St. Louis's worst opening night defeat in franchise history.

A month later is when Laine lit up the Blues with five goals as the Jets doubled up St. Louis 8-4.

In all, the teams faced off four times in the regular season, with the Jets winning three. St. Louis blanked the Jets 1-0 in December, when they last met.

And when the first light dawned on 2019, the Blues were dead last in the 31-team NHL. The Jets were third.

But St. Louis changed its tune through the second half, tearing up the league with a 30-10-5 (win-loss-overtime loss) run to finish 12th — including going 8-1-1 in the final stretch.

The Jets, meanwhile, ran into scoring droughts with several star players, and sputtered to a mediocre 22-18-3 record in the second half.

"I know I'm dressed like I'm big and ferocious but deep down inside … I'm pretty terrified about this. St. Louis is hot. Jets, not so much," said Jordan Melnyk, one of the 9,500 fans who paid $5 to get into the official Whiteout Street Party on blocked-off roads around the arena.

The Jets and Blues both finished the regular season with 99 points, so it's not a surprise the game was so tight, ending almost dead even in shots with the Blues edging the Jets 26-25.

"Real tight, and that's what we expect," Jets captain Blake Wheeler said. "We expect it's going to go seven, and seven real close games. It didn't go our way tonight."

Game 2 of the series is slated for Friday, also in Winnipeg, before the series shifts to the Enterprise Center in St. Louis for Game 3 on Sunday and Game 4 on Tuesday.

Notebook:

• The Jets' streaks are over. Last season they went 3-0 in playoff series-opening games, beating the Minnesota Wild (3-2), Nashville Predators (4-1), and Vegas Golden Knights (4-2) in the first games of their respective series.
• Until Wednesday, the Jets had also won their last nine playoff games when leading after the second period, dating back to the 2018 playoffs.
• This is the first time in franchise history that the Jets 2.0 have reached the playoffs in back-to-back seasons and fourth time overall that they've been in the post-season.
• Blake Wheeler leads the Jets in scoring in Game 1s with six points (all assists) in four games, while Mark Scheifele has five points (4G, 1A) in four games.
• Goaltender Connor Hellebuyck went 3-0 in Game 1s last season with a 1.67 goals-against average and .944 save percentage.
• The Jets went 13-12-1 against Central Division teams during the regular season, which is their poorest divisional record since going 11-16-2 during the 2015-16 season.
• Scheifele finished the playoffs last season with 14 goals in 17 games and set an NHL record for most road goals in a playoff series with seven in the second round against Nashville.