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WINNIPEG, Manitoba -- Is Paul Maurice sabotaging Patrik Laine's shot at the Calder Trophy?
Winnipeg Jets fans sure think so. The coach is under fire online and on radio talk shows for keeping his 18-year-old rookie on the bench in key situations, particularly on power plays, in favor of lesser lights who have no chance of winning any end-of-season awards.
When the Jets play host to the Anaheim Ducks on Thursday, Laine will try to burnish his credentials for the league's rookie-of-the-year honor.
Laine has fallen to second among all rookie scorers with 34 goals and 61 points. In Winnipeg's 4-3 shootout win over the Devils in New Jersey on Tuesday, Laine played just 1:44 on the power play.
Center Adam Lowry, meanwhile, who will never be mistaken for Alex Ovechkin or Vladimir Tarasenko, logged more than twice as much time with the man advantage -- 3:32. The third-liner has 14 goals and 12 assists this season.
Toronto Maple Leafs first-year center Auston Matthews has 35 goals and 62 points. A couple of weeks ago, Laine had a five-point lead over Matthews.
Before the Jets took to the ice on Tuesday, they had been eliminated from the playoffs, making the last couple of weeks of the season meaningless -- except to see whether Laine can capture the Calder Trophy.
"It (stinks), that's one way to say it," Jets forward Nikolaj Ehlers told the Winnipeg Sun about being eliminated from contention. "We've been working, from the end of last year until now, to make the playoffs. Being in this position right now and having not made the playoffs is not a great feeling. But when we've played our game, we've really shown we can be one of the top-end teams in this league.
"We just have to be able to find a way to be consistent in that. We've got a young team in here, and sometimes consistency can be a problem. Obviously, we don't want to wait five years until we're all grown up. We're all old enough and good enough to make that step now."
The Ducks come to town as one of the hottest teams in the NHL, having won five consecutive games and posting an 8-1-1 record in their past 10. They are perched on the top rung of the Pacific Division, and they clinched a spot in the postseason thanks to a 4-1 road victory over the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday.
If the Thursday matchup comes down to a battle of special teams, the ice will tilt in favor of the Ducks. While both teams score on 17.7 percent of their power plays, the Ducks kill penalties with 84.9 percent proficiency, fourth in the league, while the Jets are successful 76.9 percent of the time, second to last.
Ducks coach Randy Carlyle, who is well-known to Winnipeg fans as a former leader on Jets 1.0 in the 1980s and '90s and coach of the Manitoba Moose when they were the affiliate of the Canucks after the original Jets left for Phoenix, is anticipating a tough game.
"There are no easy ones," he told the Orange County Register, "and they've got a big, strong team. We've got a road trip that's not an easy one. The schedule makers haven't figured out that Calgary and Edmonton are between (Vancouver and) Winnipeg."
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