The Winnipeg Jets have spent the past week collecting milestones almost as fast as wins.
Three rookies have hit major firsts during the club’s three-game winning streak, and each one came with a little extra meaning attached. One helped launch a comeback for the ages.
Another finally got on the scoresheet after a long wait. A third buried his first NHL goal against one of the league’s biggest names.
Tyrel Bauer’s first NHL goal looked, at first glance, like little more than a late consolation prize. With the Jets down 4-1 to the Montreal Canadiens and only 2:39 left on the clock in the Nov. 3 game, the 24-year-old defenseman scored what seemed like a harmless marker.
But Bauer’s shot turned into the start of something wild. Less than a minute later, he picked up his first NHL assist as well, setting up Morgan Barron to trim the deficit to 4-2.
From there, the Jets kept coming. They scored twice more in regulation with the goalie pulled, forced overtime, and finished off what became the latest four-goal comeback in NHL history. Bauer, who had no points in his first nine NHL games and is better known for throwing punches than putting pucks in the net, also dropped the gloves with Canadiens tough guy Arber Xhekaj earlier in the third and finished with a Gordie Howe hat trick.
The win ended Winnipeg’s nine-game losing streak, and Bauer made it clear afterward how much it meant.
“Listen, that’s a long stretch,” he said. That’s a long, hard stretch, but this group believed in each other.
We’re proud of that. We had each other’s backs in that room.
I don’t know if I wanted to win a hockey game more in my life.”
“That’s a special feeling, especially for that group right now,” he continued. “It’s no secret what we just went through.
In a game where we thought we were playing well and we were doing some good things and we just still couldn’t find it. We knew something had to give and finally it did.” (’10-game losing streak?
Nein,’ Winnipeg Free Press, Nov. 3, 2026.)
Viggo Bjork had his own breakthrough two nights later against the Vancouver Canucks. The highly touted eighth-overall pick in the 2026 draft had gone 16 games without a point before finally breaking through with a secondary assist on Mark Scheifele’s second-period goal on Nov. 5.
The play came during a shift where Bjork was still working behind the net while Adam Lowry and Alex Iafallo had already changed, and head coach Scott Arniel had moved the 18-year-old to third-line wing in an effort to ease some of the pressure. When the point finally came, the reaction was pure relief.
“It was fun. I felt like it should have come a couple games earlier, but eventually it came here,” Bjorck, who appeared to be losing some confidence over his past number of games, said postgame.
“For me it’s also important to go through. It’s not the end of the world, but still some tough times to build up here mentally.
It’s not always going to be glamorous and just sun and rainbows and stuff like that. Eventually you just grind your way through it,” he continued.
The crowd made sure he knew they noticed, chanting his name after the goal announcement.
“We’ve got a wonderful crowd here. The fans are so passionate. It is really fun to play here,” Bjorck said.
Then on Nov. 8 against the Tampa Bay Lightning, Bjork kept rolling with two assists, giving him his first NHL multi-point game and his first point streak.
Brayden Yager joined the list in that same game, scoring his first NHL goal on two-time Vezina Trophy winner Andrei Vasilevskiy. The power-play goal came in the middle of the period and gave Winnipeg a 3-0 lead, though the Jets would later give that advantage back before Mark Scheifele won it with one second left.
Yager was playing in just his sixth NHL game, but the first goal had been building for a while. He played the final three games of last season with the Jets and didn’t record a point, then forced the issue this year with a strong start for the Manitoba Moose, where he put up seven goals and five assists for 12 points in 10 games. That production, combined with Winnipeg’s need for more depth scoring during the losing streak, earned him a call-up and a top-six role with power-play time in the second game of his second stint with the club.
His family was there to see it, too.
“Unbelievable feeling,” Yager said postgame. “Dream come true.”
“I think it’s important that some of us other guys step up, and I thought we did a really good job that tonight,” he continued.
For the Jets, the rookie milestones have been more than just nice moments. They’ve come with wins attached, and that’s the part that matters most as Winnipeg looks to keep the homestand rolling against the New Jersey Devils on Tuesday.
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