In Tampa, the Lighting found themselves chases Jets on Sunday in a 3-2 loss to Winnipeg.
Connor Hellebuyck made 33 saves in the Winnipeg win.The Jets improved to 38-26-3.
“It’s huge. … Two tough barns, especially the last couple of years with how good Florida is,” Winnipeg associate coach Scott Arniel said. “It’s a real desperate time for us. We have to keep pace with everyone in our Division (Central) and Conference (Western). We knew it was going to be a tough (three-game) trip, and it’s off to a great start.”
Alex Killorn scored 79 seconds into the game to give the Lighting a 1-0 lead.
“I thought we had a ton of chances tonight,” Killorn said. “I thought we played a good, solid game. Obviously, we didn’t get the win. I don’t even know how many posts we hit during the game. The way we played is going the right way, and if you do that consistently, you’re going to win a lot more than you lose.”
The Jets improved to 38-26-3.
Winnipeg got even midway through the first off a marker from Nate Schmidt.
In the middle frame, Nino Niederreiter and Morgan Barron scored for the Jets to get them a 3-1 advantage.
“We know all the points matter right now, and our schedule doesn’t get easier,” Barron said. “And the next two games are against really good teams with [the Carolina Hurricanes] and Boston (Bruins) coming up.”
Tampa dropped to 39-22-6.
“Are we a better team now than we were? No question,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “Is it disappointing to only get five of eight points? It is. We definitely thought we should have gotten points out of this game, and we didn’t. And we thought we should have gotten two points against Vegas (a 4-3 overtime loss to the Golden Knights on Thursday). Now we’ve just got to go on the road and get some on the road.”
Anthony Cirelli scored a shorthanded goal in the second to close the gap to 3-2.
“There’s only a certain amount of games left before the playoffs and guys are pushing, teams are starting to push,” Tampa Bay forward Corey Perry said. “We’re starting to play the right way, but at the same time, we’ve still got a little bit more.”
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 19 saves in the Lightning loss.
“We might have had [three] posts today and we might have had one with four seconds left,” Cooper said. “A goalie’s best friend is the post, and it was Hellebuyck’s tonight.”
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