SAN JOSE – Coming off a big come from behind victory over the Ducks on Tuesday night the Winnipeg Jets were looking to continue on their winning ways in San Jose against the surging Sharks. The Jets got their third win in a row for the first time all season with a big 5-4 win.
Ondrej Pavelec got the start for the Jets in goal and he stopped 20 shots for the win.
“There are a lot of issues of how we played that we’re not happy with,” forward Tommy Wingels said. “We’ve got to figure out how to win at home. That’s certainly a concern for us. We didn’t play with a playoff-type mentality.
“You can’t get into the rush game in the playoffs. You can’t turn pucks over in the neutral zone. You can’t turn pucks over coming out of the zone, and that’s what we did numerous times. You feed the other team going with speed and it’s tough to defend. Certainly, our penalty kill can use some work too. Those are some big concerns for us going into the playoffs. Yeah, we’re going to move on, but certainly there are things we can tighten up and work on.”
After a slow start, the Jets fell behind when Joe Pavelski converted a nice feed from Joe Thornton for his 37th a power play marker.
After some penalty troubles for the Jets they finally got a power play of their own and Mark Scheifele stayed hot with his 28th of the year from Blake Wheeler and Dustin Byfuglien.
The Sharks continued to be red hot on the power play as Thornton got his 19th and Paul Martin got his third of the season.
The Jets then got two goals in a minute as Andrew Copp got his sixth from Byfuglien and Nic Petan then Blake Wheeler got his 25th from Byfuglien and Scheifele.
‘We have guys here who love to compete, and we get to do it one more time before next year,” Wheeler said. “We moved it well, caught them out of position and got in behind them a few times and got a couple of good bounces.”
The big three continued to be hot as Scheifele, Wheeler and Byfuglien all had multi-point games.
Rookie forward Brandon Tanev played in his second straight game and continues to impress coach Paul Maurice with his quickness and smarts.
After a disallowed goal by Scheifele, it was determined he kicked the puck in, the momentum shifted and the Sharks got the go ahead goal from Patrick Marleau his 25th of the season.
“Burn the tape,” Sharks coach Peter DeBoer said. “Nothing pretty tonight. Any time you don’t play well it’s disappointing, but I recognized the circumstances, I understand it a little bit. We haven’t made a habit of it and I’m sure we’ll bounce back.”
Special teams continued to be the story as Scheifele put home his 29th on the power play from Petan and Nik Ehlers.
Dustin Byfuglien scored the winner with under 10 seconds to go, his 19th of the season. Byfuglien finished the game with four points.
“It’s good to battle back from being down 3-1, but to be honest, there’s less intensity in these games and I’m not going to get excited about winning three in a row,” Jets coach Paul Maurice said.
The Jets will close out the 2015/16 season in Los Angeles against the Kings on the weekend.
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