In Winnipeg, the Jets took a 2-0 lead coming out of the opening stanza on Monday then held off the visiting Pittsburgh Penguins for a 2-1 win.
The victory ended a five-game slide for the Jets.
Connor Hellebuyck made 35 saves in the win.
“With [Hellebuyck], if he didn’t play the way he did in that second period (stopping 15 of 16 shots), we probably wouldn’t have been ahead,” Jets forward Nikolaj Ehlers said. “I’ve said this a million times now. We’ve got two pretty good goalies, and they’re top class. We’re pretty fortunate with that”
The Jets improved to 31-14-5.
The Jets bounced back from an ugly 3-0 loss to the Penguins on Thursday.
Mark Scheifele and Nino Niederreiter were the strikers for the Jets in the first period.
“It was huge. It’s been a while,” Ehlers said. “You lose five games in a row, you don’t just want to get two points, you want to get back to playing the right way, and we did that for 40 minutes today. Now we’ve got to change that to more than 40 minutes. We know what type of team we have in here. We’ve showed that throughout the season. We need to get it going again.”
Scheifele staked the Jets to a 1-0 lead midway through the first.
“Oh, they were flying,” Winnipeg coach Rick Bowness said of the line of Scheifele, Ehlers, and Kyle Connor. “Look at the chances. We’re walking in all alone, breakaways, 2-on-1s right off the bat. So, the win’s got to help us. Eventually those pucks, those pucks will start going in for us.”
Niederreiter pushed the lead to 2-0 for Winnipeg when he added a marker at 15:39.
“I’m trying to get [to the net front] as good as I can. It’s not easy to get there.” Niederreiter said. “But once you’re there, pucks are getting delivered there, and it’s a matter of timing. But I’m glad I found one tonight. … I know [Schmidt] tried to get it through. I figured with him, he was trying to get it toward the net, and there was a lot of traffic in front of him. It bypassed them and luckily it went in afterward.”
The Penguins dropped to 23-19-7.
“We didn’t establish the game we wanted to play,” Pittsburgh coach Mike Sullivan said. “I don’t think we matched the urgency off the start that we needed to, and I don’t think we played a smart game like we needed to. So, we didn’t set ourselves up to play the game that we needed to win. I thought that we responded in the second period. I thought we played hard but we were chasing the game.”
Bryan Rust was the lone striker for the Penguins, his goal at 14:08 of the middle frame 
trimmed the deficit to 2-1, but Hellebuyck protected the slim advantage for the win.
“First period was not good, let’s leave that at that. It certainly wasn’t good enough,” Rust said. “I think from there on out we started to play a bit harder. Obviously, there’s going to be mistakes out there. We could have been a little bit tighter defensively, but I think overall for that last 40 minutes we played hard and got a lot of chances. Just didn’t get enough pucks in the net.”
Tristan Jarry made 29 saves in the loss.
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