Jets' Bowness promises 'tough fight' with season on brink vs. Knights
Only 31 teams in NHL history have ever overcome a 3-1 series deficit, and Winnipeg Jets head coach Rick Bowness knows it'll be difficult to make sure his squad becomes the 32nd.
"We have to be confident, we have to be, and we will be," he told reporters Tuesday. "We'll be a very confident group going into (Game 5). We're gonna have a swagger to us that says, 'If we go out, it's gonna be one tough fight for you guys tonight.'
"If we play with that attitude, then I like our chances."
The Jets won the first game of their opening-round series against the Vegas Golden Knights but lost the next three in a row and find themselves one contest away from elimination.
Despite the tall order at hand, Connor Hellebuyck said his team will "take it one game at a time."
"We just need one. We don't need three, we need one. And we'll go from there," he said. "I like our team, I like the way we've been playing. A bounce here, a bounce there, and things can go well."
He added, "I think we have the character in our room to do something special, to do something great. Like we said, we're looking for one game ... and we'll move onto the next one and then we'll prepare the same way."
Hellebuyck was one of the top goalies in the regular season with a .920 save percentage and a 2.49 goals against average in a league-leading 64 starts. He's posted a 1-3 record with an .895 clip and 3.21 goals against average against Vegas so far.
"If you asked me at the beginning of the series how I thought it was going to go with how my game's been and how I feel, I would not expect the results to be the way they are," Hellebuyck said.
"That being said, we're inches away from really flipping the script on this."
In order to flip that script, Bowness is certain of the game plan his team will need to deploy.
"We're not gonna go into that game hoping to win and sit back and hope things go our way," he said. "That's not how we play. ... We're gonna try to avoid playing on our heels and play as aggressive as we can, as intelligently as we can."
The Jets will have to pull off a win in Game 5 without defenseman Josh Morrissey, but Bowness is "hopeful" that star Mark Scheifele - who exited Game 4 with an upper-body issue - will be able to re-enter the fold.
Puck drops on the crucial contest Thursday in Vegas at 10 p.m. ET.
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