Ehlers gets hat trick, Jets ease past Blue Jackets

COLUMBUS -- Nikolaj Ehlers scored a hat trick and had an assist for the Winnipeg Jets in a 6-2 win against the Columbus Blue Jackets at Nationwide Arena on Friday.

“I felt pretty good in warmups,” Ehlers said. “I’d be pretty disappointed if I didn’t score tonight with that warmup. It was pretty funny how that worked out.”

Kyle Connor had an assist to extend his season-opening point streak (nine goals, nine assists) to 11 games for the Jets (10-1-0), who became the 12th team in NHL history to have 10 wins through their first 11 games.

They have outscored opponents 52-26.

“Our offense is generated by our defense,” Winnipeg goalie Eric Comrie said. “If you look at the games, we come back so hard, backcheck so hard, we play great in our D-zone. We really take pride in what we do. It forces teams to do extra stuff, and we capitalize on their turnovers and their mistakes.”

Mason Appleton, Josh Morrissey and Gabriel Vilardi scored for Winnipeg, and Comrie made 20 saves.

Sean Kuraly and Sean Monahan scored, and Elvis Merzlikins made 37 saves for the Blue Jackets (5-4-1), whose four-game point streak (3-0-1) ended.

“It was back and forth there for a little bit, who's putting each team under more pressure,” Kuraly said. “Eventually they tilted it in their favor. I think maybe in some of those instances, we got a little impatient and didn't just punch back like we wanted to.”

Ehlers made it 1-0 at 5:13 of the first period with a slap shot off the rush from the top of the left circle.

“When he puts his speed on display like that, he’s a hard player to defend,” Winnipeg coach Scott Arniel said.

Kuraly tied it 1-1 at 11:02 before Ehlers gave the Jets a 2-1 lead at 15:14 with a wrist shot from the right face-off dot.

Appleton extended the lead to 3-1 at 2:20 of the second period, one-timing a shot through traffic from the right circle off a feed by Neal Pionk.

“They’ve got a lot of speed up front, and I think we got surprised by it a little bit,” Blue Jackets coach Dean Evason said. “But we fed into it, or compounded the issues by making soft plays out of our zone that they got sticks on pucks, turned it over and then away they went.”

Monahan made it 3-2 on the power play at 16:29. He tipped in Zach Werenski’s shot from the point for his sixth goal, which leads the Blue Jackets.

“I don’t think we had a great game,” Monahan said. “We gave them a lot, but we can learn from that game.”

Ehlers scored at 18:51 for the hat trick and a 4-2 lead. His three-goal game marked the fifth of his NHL career and his first since Dec. 20, 2018.

Morrissey made it 5-2 at 11:39 of the third period with a power-play goal from the top of the left circle, and Vilardi pushed it to 6-2 at 14:54 after Connor dangled past two defensemen and fed him at the top of the crease.

The Jets are 6-0-0 on the road with a 30-12 goal differential.

“When you’ve got goalies like we do, and with the defensive structure we have going for us right now, giving limited scoring chances, that helps us a lot,” Ehlers said. “Columbus, they were really good tonight. They made us work but we found a way.”

NOTES: Ehlers (fifth hat trick) is tied with Connor for the fourth most in franchise history. … Vilardi (three goals, two assists) and Mark Scheifele (one goal, three assists) have three-game point streaks. … Blue Jackets forward Dmitri Voronkov made his season debut after being on the injured list with an upper-body injury since Oct. 4. He had one shot in 13:24 of ice time. … Monahan scored his 250th NHL goal. … The Blue Jackets set a team record for the most goals through their first 10 games (37), breaking the mark of 36 set in 2018-19.