On Saturday night in Newark the visiting Winnipeg Jets blew a two-goal lead in the third period and needed a strike from Mark Scheifele with 17 seconds left in overtime to rescue the victory, 4-3, over the New Jersey Devils.
It was Scheifele’s second goal of the game.
He scored after stealing the puck at the Devils’ blueline and racing in on net.
“I saw [Hischier] kind of expose it a little bit, so I grabbed it and was pretty exhausted at the time, so [I] just wanted to get a shot off and [was] happy the rebound came to me,” Scheifele said. “We didn’t want to let our lead slip away, but we did get the win and we’re happy with that.”
Josh Morrissey and Andrew Copp also scored for the Jets.
“There was lots of emotion and [Scheifele] was wired all night,” Jets head coach Paul Maurice said. “I thought he was really good and battled defensively. As a leader, he took it very seriously and competed really hard.”
Winnipeg improved to 15-8-2.
“We look at [Scheifele and Blake Wheeler] as drivers of our team and again [Saturday], like every other night, they’re driving,” Morrissey said. “[Wheeler] made an unbelievable pull-up and then threads the needle to [Scheifele] on that first goal.
“In overtime, [Scheifele] hustles back, and makes an unbelievable play after going hard into the boards earlier in the overtime. But that’s the character he has; he made a huge play to score the OT winner.”
Laurent Brossoit made 36 saves in getting the win.
Jesper Bratt, Marcus Johansson and Taylor Hall scored for the Devils who have now lost five straight.
“We were coming in back-to-back versus a rested team,” Devils head coach John Hynes said . “I really liked the way our team played. Even though we got down when we gave up a couple of goals in the third, to get two goals in under five minutes in the third, we worked our way into a point.”
[WATCH: All Jets vs. Devils highlights]
Keith Kinkaid made 34 saves in the loss.
“I think we’re just trying to be too pretty; we just need to shoot. Make the goaltender make a save, not overpass to our player and have them come back the other way. We’ve got to put pucks on net. We certainly had plenty of opportunities, but we didn’t put the puck in the net,” Kinkaid said after the loss.
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