Jets defeat Toronto, 3-1, nail down second in Central

On the road in Toronto Saturday, the Winnipeg Jets earned a 3-1 win over the Maple Leafs and locked down second place in the Central Division.

“You take every win as a positive; you have to do a lot of good things in this league to win games, no matter who you are playing,” Jets captain Blake Wheeler said. “This is obviously a team that’s trying to load up for a deep postseason run. We came in respecting the way they play the game and just wanted to be all over them, so I thought that was a real positive for us.”

Josh Morrissey, Dustin Byfuglien and Andrew Copp had the Jets’ strikes in the win, their seventh of the last eight games.

“Real important momentum, I liked where we were at that point in the game,” Jets head coach Paul Maurice said. “We’ve been pretty good at not changing our game. Paul Stastny on both goals, real good net-front screen, and we’ve got guys from the back end that can shoot it. We stuck to our game and played pretty darn well.”

Connor Hellebuyck made 28 saves in picking up the win.

“Just speed, we were on the puck much better, our forwards were quicker reloading so our defense could step up and take away time and space from their forwards,” Wheeler said as the Jets rebounded from a loss to Chicago earlier in the week. “That’s a group that wants time, wants space and wants to be creative. With the way our guys move back there, if they take that away (from them), it’s tough (for them to generate chances).”

Patrick Marleau scored the lone Leafs goal in the loss.

“I’m disappointed, you always want to win each and every night,” Leafs head coach Mike Babcock said. “I know looking at the schedule in advance we were in tough. I thought our second period hurt us. When you don’t have quite as much juice, you’re not quite as good. We made a couple of mistakes there not stopping in the [defensive] zone on a couple of those plays, and in the end, it ended up in our net. I didn’t think they generated a ton and I didn’t think we generated a ton. It was tight. In the end, they were better.”

[WATCH: All Jets vs. Maple Leafs highlights]

Curtis McElhinney made 26 saves in taking the loss.

“I think it just shows you’ve got to be sharp each and every night, and sometimes the details of the game is the difference, most of the time it’s the difference. Tonight was no different,” Marleau said after the loss.