Jets throttle Canucks, 5-1

The Winnipeg Jets have been sluggish of late but they broke out the offense on home ice and dismantled the Vancouver Canucks in a 5-1 win.

Mathieu Perreault struck twice for the Jets in the win.

“Somehow, we’ve been doing it at home,” Perreault said. “I’m not so sure why, but it seems like in this building we feel very comfortable in our game and we’ve been playing some solid hockey here, so it was just another example of it.”

Dmitry Kulikov, Nikolaj Ehlers and Josh Morrissey added single markers for Winnipeg.

“It hasn’t been working the way we wanted it to these past couple of games,” Ehlers said of the Jets power play. “Our mindset today was to just get pucks to the net and create chances off that, and we did that. We gave ourselves a chance to score on the power play.”

Connor Hellebuyck made 25 saves for the win.

“You come to the rink hopeful every day and optimistic, but those are the games you’re worried about, especially with that schedule, coming back off [three road games against Eastern Conference teams],” Jets head coach Paul Maurice said after the game. “And we’ve got some guys, Blake Wheeler was quite ill today. He plays, he’s played with just about everything. But we had some guys with not a lot in the tank. So no part of our game was easy.”

The Jets improved to 18-8-5 with the win and continue to challenge for the dvisional top spot.

[WATCH: All Canucks vs. Jets highlights]

Jacob Markstrom made 19 saves and yielded four goals.

“I thought we played well, actually,” Canucks forward Thomas Vanek said. “Five-on-5, we were right there, if not better, and that’s an offensive team there, especially on the power play. In the second period, we lost the momentum a little bit with those penalty kills against, and before you know it, they scored a couple power-play goals and we were playing from behind, and that’s a tough team to chase.”

The loss was the fourth straight for the Canucks who dropped to 14-13-4 on the season.

“That didn’t feel like a 5-1 hockey game, that’s for sure. I think 5-on-5 we gave up 17 shots, and we got to find a way to score a couple more goals,” Canucks head coach Travis Green said after the game.