Three things - Scheifele hat trick leads Jets past Panthers

WINNIPEG – The Winnipeg Jets set another franchise record by winning for the ninth time in their first 10 games on home ice beating the Florida Panthers 5-3 at Canada Life Centre. Mark Scheifele had the hat trick, Morgan Barron scored his first two goals of the season and Kyle Connor scored his 12^th of the season. Nikolaj Ehlers (2A), Connor (1G, 1A) and Josh Morrissey (2A) had multi-point efforts, Connor Hellebuyck made 20 saves and improved to 13-2 on the season. Winnipeg will head back on the road starting a six-game road trip in Pittsburgh on Friday.

TOP LINE GETS IT STARTED

The Jets had a couple of great scoring chances in the first period, Neal Pionk hitting the post and Adam Lowry also hitting iron and not beating Sergei Bobrovsky. At 14:13, Winnipeg finally got the puck past the Panther netminder when Kyle Connor jumped on a loose puck and backhanded his 12th of the season to make it 1-0. The top line went to work again at 17:40, Mark Scheifele took a pass from Gabe Vilardi and ripped a low shot glove side past Bobrovsky. After failing to score on 27 shots on Saturday, Winnipeg scored twice on their first five shots of the night. Scheifele extended his point streak on home ice to 10 games, which is one game behind the franchise record set by Connor in 2022-23.

"As a team we didn't like how we played in Florida, so it's a good sign of a lot of good character in this room," said Scheifele.

"We wanted to bounce back, we wanted to have a good game in front of our home crowd before we go on the road."

POWER PLAY IS BACK

The NHL’s top power play went oh-for-Florida (0-for-7) in the previous two games. Tonight, in the second period, the Jets had a two minute five-on-three but could not score generating four shots. With just over five minutes to go in the period, the power play got another chance with Dmitry Kulikov in the box for tripping Vlad Namestnikov. 1:11 into it, Nikolaj Ehlers sent a seam pass to Scheifele, and his one timer gave the Jets a 3-0 lead at 15:41.

SCHEIFELE COMPLETES THE HAT TRICK

The defending champions didn’t go away getting goals from A.J. Greer at 17:24 of the second and Sam Reinhart on the power play at 7:10 of the third to make it 3-2. But Scheifele would complete his ninth career hat trick after their fourth power play expired finishing a nice passing play from Connor. Scheifele passed Patrik Laine for the second most hat tricks in franchise history behind Ilya Kovalchuk (11).

After the Panthers made it 4-3 on a power play goal from Matthew Tkachuk, Morgan Barron scored back-to-back empty net goals. Barron became the second player in Jets/Thrashers histroy to score multiple shorthanded goals in a game, joining Marian Hossa who did back on Dec. 19, 2006.