Jets nip Kings, 6-4

In Los Angeles, Connor Hellebuyck made 40 saves  and the Winnipeg Jets got past the Kings, 6-4, on Thursday night.

It was an ugly two points.

“I know it’s not VHS tape, but it’s in the garbage,” Jets associate coach Scott Arniel said. “We won’t even [look at it], we’ll just put that one aside. … There’s a lot of mistakes that happened, but there’s a lot of good things also. We found a way, and you can never criticize a win.”

It wasn’t better for the Kings.

“We still don’t know how we want to play,” Los Angeles coach Todd McLellan said. “I would think the experiment of run and gun that we are trying to play, how much more evidence do we need that it doesn’t work?”

Axel Jonsson-Fjallby scored what proved to be the game-winner in the third period for a 5-4 lad to the Jets.

The Jets were 2-sor-5 on the power play; LA scored once in four chances.

Mark Scheifele scored on the Jets’ first shot of the game for a 1-0 lead.

LA replied with three goals from Arthur Kaliyev Blake Lizotte, and Gabriel Vilardi for a 3-1 lead

“There’s really no other way to go but up after the first 10 minutes of the game,” Winnipeg defenseman Nate Schmidt said. “Thank God we have a world-class goaltender, otherwise I think that game is a lot different after the first period. Sometimes it takes your goaltender to make all the saves to wake up the guys and be ready to go.”

Adam Lowry and Pierre-Luc Dubois also scored for Winnipeg.

“They were putting the boots to us pretty good, and ‘Hellie’ gave us a chance to find our game,” Lowry said. “Sometimes it’s easy to fold the tent, you know, you got a back to back. And I think credit to our guys, we score, make it 3-2, and then come out and get a couple big ones in the second period.”

Trevor Moore  tied the 4-4 for the Kings.

Blake Wheeler hit an empty-net, power play goal in the final minute for a the 6-4 final.

“Whether we can blame it on the PK, not scoring on the power play, bad changes, turnovers, whatever, the bottom line is we can’t give up six and think we have a chance to win,” Kings captain Anze Kopitar said.

Jonathan Quick made 13 saves in the LA loss.