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This article was published 5/2/2016 (1686 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A players-only meeting sparked some life into the Winnipeg Jets on Friday night.

Down 4-0 to the Carolina Hurricanes after just 10:04 of the NHL game at the MTS Centre, the Jets players shut the door and had some frank words amongst themselves.

So how much can one value how a team plays in what’s commonly referred to as garbage time?

"A lot," said Jets winger Mathieu Perreault. "We had a little talk after the first, just the guys together. Sometimes the coaches can only say so much. It has to come from us eventually. We’re the guys on the ice.

"We had a little talk that that was unacceptable, that it was embarrassing, really. It was just a weird week and an ugly start where we just had no... just a couple of bounces that didn’t go our way.

"That was just terrible and we had a little talk to figure ourselves out and we came out in the second and third to play much harder. This is the way we have to play."

It didn’t quite work out as the Hurricanes put a 5-3 victory in the books, surviving a late scare that saw the Jets pull to within one with 6:12 to play.

Are the Jets feeling better after mounting a comeback and showing some life?

"We lost the game, so it sucks but we battled back to put ourselves in position to maybe tie it," Perreault said. "And again, just another weird play and they (got the fifth goal). That sucks."

Jets coach Paul Maurice wasn’t giving his team a total pass but he did speak supportively of what happened after 4-0.

"That moment’s there in your life," Maurice said. "You’re down 4-0 and you’ve got to deal with it one way or the other. We dealt with it the right way.

"I’m not going to try to blend the two moments, saying one makes the other OK, but when you’re at that moment and things are awful and you’re embarrassed by the way you’re playing, they handled it as best they could and did a hell of a job digging out of the hole."

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca