The shutout was his second straight and 40th career shutout.
“I thought the guys played really hard in front of me. They let me see pucks, cleared rebounds, scored. We really committed to our game in our defensive zone. It might not have been pretty but that’s why every game is a team effort," said Hellebuyck.
“We didn’t give up at all. We battled right to the end. Like I said, they were cleaning up, they weren’t giving up any rebounds, they were boxing out, puck was hitting me. We had a perfect combination for a game like that.” “No. 40 feels really good. That’s one of those milestones. One more is just the 300 wins. I’m really looking forward to that this season. Hopefully, I can achieve it, but this one feels really good.” Winnipeg has lost only once this season, a 6-4 setback to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Their record stands at 13-1-0.
Alexandar Georgiev made 27 saves for Colorado, who dropped to 6-8-0.
Gabriel Vilardi opened the scoring just over a minute into the opening stanza when Mark Scheifele took control of the puck along the boards in he neutral zone before moving across the Avalanche line and sliding the disc to Vilardi, who shot the puck past and outstretched Georgiev's glove at 1:06.
The tally was his 6th of the season.
"Yeah, I think on the 2-on-1’s, I'm expecting to get that puck every time from him. I've seen him do it in practice so many times. He always finds the triangles under the stick, whether it's through the legs, whatever it is, he'll wait a guy out and find the seam and that's on 2-on-1’s, that's on power play. That's all over the ice because he's just such a smart player," said Vilardi.
There was no scoring in the second period.
Colorado put on some pressure in the third, outshooting Winnipeg 16-4 and generated some quality scoring chances but were unable to score.
Avalanche Head Coach Jared Bednar pulled his goaltender with just over three minutes left in regulation.
Colorado enjoyed a two-man advantage for 1:10 as Jets defenceman Josh Morrissey was penalized for holding but were unable to tie the game.
Avalanche Head Coach Jared Bednar was satisfied with his club's effort on the night. "Listen I don't have any complaints on our game, our effort or competitiveness. I thought it was all fantastic tonight. You know I would say the chances we gave up on the defensive side, they (Jets) earned them. You know we had a couple of turnovers up ice first period especially that led to some dangerous chances against."
But Jets Head Coach Scott Arniel wasn't quite as content with his troop's effort as his counterpart Bednar was.
"I think I'll go three places. We didn't break the puck out real well. We didn't get through the neutral zone. We turned a lot of pucks over through the neutral zone and then we didn't have that extended zone time. We got knocked off pucks. Our puck support in the ozone, where we usually -- and especially in the first, we had close support, we got pucks to the net, we had traffic... It was kind of a 200 foot kind of problem tonight. In the second period, I think they had five rush chances where we got outnumbered. Our F3 dove in, our fourth and fifth guys got beat up the ice by maybe their D, so a little bit of everything kind of happened there." SHOTS-COLORADO 34 WINNIPEG 28
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