Kyle Connor Strikes With a Minute Left as Jets Hand Avalanche Their First Loss
Connor's second goal of the night — off a Mark Scheifele cross-ice feed at 19:00 of the third — kept Winnipeg unbeaten in regulation and tied him for third on the franchise goals list.
A game that spent two periods as a deflection contest was decided by one clean piece of skill. With exactly a minute left in regulation, Mark Scheifele threaded a cross-ice pass through traffic and Kyle Connor buried a catch-and-release wrist shot from the hashmarks, giving the Winnipeg Jets a 3-2 win over the Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday at Canada Life Centre.
How it unfolded
Jaden Schwartz opened the scoring at 2:51 of the second on a fortunate bounce, but Winnipeg answered through tips: Connor deflected a Neal Pionk point shot at 4:01, and Cole Perfetti redirected a Dylan Samberg drive off his skate at 18:16 — his third straight game with a goal. Fedor Svechkov tied it at 12:35 of the third, poking in a loose puck after Schwartz found him off a carom, before Connor's winner. Stuart Skinner made 32 saves for Winnipeg; Mackenzie Blackwood stopped 16 for Colorado, per the NHL.com recap.
The numbers behind the winner
Connor now has 328 career goals, tying Ilya Kovalchuk for third in franchise history, and seven points through four games. The Connor-Scheifele connection has now combined on 62 game-winning goals, the most by any duo in Jets history. Winnipeg moved to 3-0-1 — points in all four games to start the season, in a stretch of four games in six days that coach Scott Arniel called a "real gritty win" to close out.
Colorado fell to 2-1-0 in its first loss of the season. Coach Jared Bednar pointed to soft coverage at the net front and a late odd-man rush against Winnipeg's top line that produced the winner. One worry for the Jets: defenseman Josh Morrissey left in the first period with an upper-body injury, returned for a single shift, and did not come back.