Jets pull another one out of the fire against lowly Sharks

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Published Feb 24, 2025  •  Last updated 6 minutes ago  •  3 minute read

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Just call them drama kings.

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For the second straight game, the Winnipeg Jets avoided a regulation loss by the skin of their teeth and won in extra time.

Two nights after Gabe Vilardi tied the game in St. Louis with 28 seconds to go and the Jets net empty, Josh Morrissey did it with 26 ticks on the clock in Monday’s home game against San Jose.

Mark Scheifele was the overtime hero this time — Kyle Connor in a shootout on Saturday — and the Jets had a 2-1 victory, extending their franchise-record win streak to 10 before a crowd of 13,801.

“That was fun,” Scheifele said. “That building was rocking. Their goalie stood on his head all night and made us go 59 minutes and 30 seconds to get past him. But that was a big win.”

Scheifele’s goal was the 329th of his NHL career, passing Ilya Kovalchuk for top spot in the Jets-Atlanta franchise history.

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Winnipeg’s first draft pick, in 2011, says he never saw this coming back then.

“He wouldn’t believe it, that’s for sure,” the 31-year-old said. “A kid from Kitchener, playing with the Kitchener Dutchman way back when I was 16, I never would have believed you.”

“He’s got lots more to go,” head coach Scott Arniel added. “But to do it on a game-winner in overtime, he’ll remember that one.”

As for Morrissey, he was playing his first game since an illness caused him to miss Canada’s win in the final of the 4 Nations tournament.

He must be fully recovered: he logged a team-high 29:35 of ice time and seemed to be out there constantly late in the game and in overtime.

“He’s a tough guy to pull off the ice,” Arniel said. “He wants to be in those situations. His recovery is amazing. He said this morning he felt like he was 100 percent. So don’t always want to go quite that high with the minutes, but it certainly paid off.”

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“I guess that’s why you skate lines and do all that stuff to get in shape for those moments,” Morrissey said.

The 4 Nations break may have interrupted the Jets winning feeling, but it hasn’t stopped their momentum, as they improve to 41-14-3.

“It’s weird because it doesn’t really feel like it,” Scheifele said of the streak. “With a two-week break in between games, it kind of puts a damper on the good feeling. But a win’s a win. And what we’ve done all year, good or bad, we celebrate tonight, but come tomorrow we are looking onto the next game. We just want to keep going.”

The Jets’ plan was to jump on the last-place Sharks early and make them realize they didn’t stand a chance against one of the NHL’s best teams.

Instead, the league’s bottom-feeder, playing on back-to-back nights, no less, scored first and nearly pulled off the upset.

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The final shots shed some more light on the disparity between these two, as Winnipeg won that tally, 35-17.

For the second straight game the Jets came away empty on their vaunted power play, going 0-2. San Jose was 1-3 with the extra man.

One of the game’s biggest hits came when Jets captain Adam Lowry crashed into Sharks goalie Vitek Vanecek in the first period. Problem is that’s against the rules, and San Jose made Lowry pay with William Eklund’s power-play goal.

It stayed that way until the third period, a Scheifele goal post the closest the Jets came to getting on the board through the first 40 minutes.

Not that they didn’t have their chances. Plenty of them, in fact.

But Vanecek turned them all aside, including a couple on the Jets only power play of the first two periods.

Handed another power play early in the third, the Jets had just one shot, and a harmless one at that.

When defenceman Colin Miller’s blast from the point rattled off the goal post midway through the third, it appeared this would simply be one of those nights.

Morrissey and Scheifele ensured it wouldn’t be.

Next up for the Jets, a two-game road trip beginning in Ottawa on Wednesday.

paul.friesen@kleinmedia.ca

X: @friesensunmedia

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