Jets double-up New Jersey, 8-4

It was a streaky kind of night in Winnipeg on Friday. The Jets opened the game with three straight goals.

The New Jersey Devils replied with four of their own.

Winnipeg ended the game with five unanswered strikes in an 8-4 win over New Jersey.

Mark Scheifele hit for a hat trick in the Jets win.

“You just get to the mindset that you’re just going to get to the net, you’re going to do the dirty things, and when you get in a position like that, you just let instincts take over,” Scheifele said after ending his seven-game goal drought. “That’s the fun part of hockey, when you get a little bit of time and space and you get to make a play.”

Nikolaj Ehlers added a pair of goals in the Winnipeg offensive outburst.

“You want to help the team any way you can, and a lot of the guys were able to get a point on a goal,” Ehlers said. “Scoring points is fun, there’s no secret to that. But I think overall we played a game that gave us a chance to win, and we deserve it.”

Connor Hellebuyck made 33 saves in the Jets win.

Hew Jersey dropped to 9-9-4.

“There’s no way in this league you’re going to win hockey games when you get scored on that many times,” New Jersey’s Nico Hischier said. “That’s what happened today. So we’ve definitely got to clean up.”

Scheifele, Ehlers, and Kristian Vesalainen scored in the first period for the early run by the Jets.

New Jersey replied with four goals including two in the first from Damon Severson and Jack Hughes.

“We had some great looks this time on the power play and we finally got a goal,” Hischier said. “That should give us confidence. We’ve just got to bring it to the next game now. Obviously it feels good to get the PP going. It’s been about time.”

Hischier tied the game, 3-3, 37 seconds into the middle frame.

“It’s always frustrating to work that hard and not be able to complete the deal,” Devils head coach Lindy Ruff said. “And we’ve been able to do that on occasion this year where we come back hard. You look at that game and you probably look at some of the opportunities that we missed … there were all types of opportunity to keep coming back, but we didn’t complete the deal.”

Ryan Graves gave New Jersey the lead, 4-3, with 79 seconds gone in the period.

“I thought we were flat there for probably six or seven minutes after that,” Winnipeg head coach Paul Maurice said. “But there wasn’t a sense that this had gotten away. That’s a really good offensive team. They’ve scored more goals than we had coming into this game (60-59).”

Ehlers tied the game, 4-4, midway through the second, and Josh Morrissey put the Jets up five minutes later and Scheifele scored with less than a minute left in the stanza. for a 6-4 lead.

Winnipeg improved to 11-8-4.

Adam Lowry finished the scoring with less than three and half minutes to go in the game for the 8-4 final.