Mark Scheifele made sure Winnipeg’s latest surge ended with a bang.
With the game hanging in the balance and the clock nearly gone, Scheifele buried the winner with 0.3 seconds left to lift the Jets past the Tampa Bay Lightning on Sunday at Canada Life Centre, giving Winnipeg its third straight victory after a wild comeback stretch that has flipped the mood around the team in a hurry.
The Jets have now stacked together wins after an improbable four-goal rally against Montreal on Tuesday and a 6-2 thumping of Vancouver on Thursday. Against Tampa Bay, they leaned on timely scoring, a late special-teams edge and enough goaltending from Stuart Skinner to survive a furious Lightning push.
Winnipeg opened the scoring early in the second period on the power play. Haydn Fleury moved the puck to Scheifele, who slipped a clean pass to Cole Perfetti for the finish past Andrei Vasilevskiy and a 1-0 lead.
Later in the period, the Jets cashed in again after killing off a penalty. Neal Pionk took a feed from Viggo Bjorck, worked through the Tampa Bay zone and found Morgan Barron across the ice. Barron one-timed it by Vasilevskiy to stretch the lead and send the building into a frenzy.
The middle frame belonged to Winnipeg for a stretch. The Jets outshot Tampa Bay 12-9 in the period and pushed their total edge to 17-14, while Brayden Yager scored his first career NHL goal on a power play.
“That was really cool," Yager said of his milestone.
"Mom, Dad and Grandpa were here, so it was pretty cool to do it in front of them. Just a great play by Viggo there that touched over to me and had a pretty wide-open net.
Unbelievable feeling. Dream come true.”
But the Lightning answered fast. Just two minutes after Yager’s goal, Tampa cut into the lead off a defensive zone giveaway, then Pontus Holmberg struck twice in a 26-second span as the visitors scored three times in 4:05 to tie it up.
That set the stage for a frantic finish. With a minute left, Winnipeg earned a five-on-three after Yanni Gourde was called for tripping and Erik Cernak picked up a delay of game minor. The Jets made the most of it, and Perfetti found Scheifele alone in the high slot for the decisive blast.
Scheifele’s fourth goal of the season came with 0.3 seconds remaining, sealing the buzzer beater and capping a night that had already swung back and forth several times.
“We’ve got a lot of great guys on this team, guys with a lot of heart and a lot of skill. You know, it’s fun," Scheifele said post-game.
"We definitely didn’t draw it up that way, but unbelievable effort by the guys. They don’t ask how.
They just ask how many wins. We’ll put that one in the chamber and not look at it again.”
“I had no idea, to be honest," Scheifele laughed. "I had a feeling if it popped out and there was such a big seam and I was wide open. I wasn’t going to waste my time looking at the clock.”
Skinner finished with 17 saves on 20 shots, while Vasilevskiy stopped 21 of 25.
Winnipeg now turns to New Jersey, which visits Manitoba on Tuesday night for the final game of the three-game homestand. After that, the Jets head to Dallas and Chicago later in the week.
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