On a milestone night for Dylan DeMelo, the stay-at-home defenceman earned himself quite the souvenir.
Playing in his 600th career NHL game, the light-scoring blueliner scored the game-winner in the final minute as the Winnipeg Jets edged the Seattle Kraken 2-1 Thursday night at the Canada Life Centre.
DeMelo’s goal with just 27 seconds left broke a one-all deadlock to give the Jets their third straight victory.
“Obviously I’m a guy that doesn’t score a lot,” said DeMelo after scoring his second goal of the season. “To score the game winner obviously just kinda put the cherry on top and to get the win. So, yeah, it was a really special night, a night I’ll definitely remember.”
Mark Scheifele had the other tally for the Jets to give him goals in four straight games. He’s also riding a seven-game point streak.
It was another slow start for the Jets, but they found their legs in the final 40 minutes.
“I liked how we played the last two periods,” said head coach Scott Arniel. “Not so much the first. Where we had talked about being better with our starts and coming out of the gate.
“But we settled down, and then like you mentioned, we took over the second and it carried right into the third.”
The Jets held the Kraken to only five shots on goal in the second and only three shots in the final frame as they outshot Seattle 36-19.
Get daily National news
“I think most of the last 40 (minutes), like you said, we dominated,” Nikolaj Ehlers said after setting up the game-winning goal. “We didn’t give them much.
“When you’re rolling like you are, you don’t want to give them anything. You don’t want to give them a breath of fresh air and I think that’s something that, I personally, and we can do a little bit better of just keep jamming it down their throat.”
The Jets have at least a point in their last five consecutive games.
Seattle got the first power play of the game when Logan Stanley was given a questionable penalty for elbowing, and while the Jets managed to kill it off, it wasn’t long after the kill that the Kraken opened the scoring.
The play began innocuously as Seattle carried the puck out of their own end but the dynamic changed when Jaden Schwartz lobbed the puck into the Winnipeg end from the red line, giving Kaapo Kakko the chance to win a race to the puck against Kyle Connor. Connor sagged off, Kakko retrieved the puck and hit a wide open Matty Beniers in front of the net for the opener at the 8:12 mark.
Seattle wound up with an 11-8 edge in shots on goal heading to the second period, though Winnipeg started controlling more of the play as the middle frame rolled along, resulting in their first power play look with 10:59 remaining.
Winnipeg won the ensuing faceoff and the league’s best power play went to work. Eventually, Josh Morrissey slid a pass to the right faceoff dot where Connor’s one-timer was stopped by Joey Daccord but the rebound bounced to the other dot where Scheifele was waiting to blast the puck into the net for his 27th of the season, leveling the score 1-1.
A few minutes later, Winnipeg got a second power play of the period but Seattle managed to kill it off.
The Kraken nearly regained the lead with just over three minutes remaining in the period when Andre Burakovsky got loose behind the Jets defencemen as they made a line change but Connor Hellebuyck stopped him with a flashy glove save.
The game stayed tied 1-1 after a period in which the Jets outshot the Kraken 19-5.
Winnipeg continued to control play in the third and threatened to take the lead as both Stanley and Adam Lowry rang shots off the crossbar but it stayed 1-1 deep into regulation before DeMelo took centre stage.
Adam Larsson had the puck in the corner and chipped it up the boards but it took a funky bounce off a stanchion and into the slot where Ehlers collected it. He held onto the puck for a moment, turned and noticed DeMelo open at the point. DeMelo got the puck, saw that Daccord was screened and ripped a shot high over Daccord’s glove for just the 19th goal of his career.
The marker was also his second game-winning goal of the season and third of his career.
Hellebuyck only had to turn aside 18 shots in the game as Winnipeg outshot Seattle 28-8 over the final 40 minutes.
The Jets wrap up this season-long eight-game homestand Saturday night when they host the Calgary Flames.
