Jets rally past Wild, spoil Fleury's 1,000th NHL game

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- The Winnipeg Jets spoiled Marc-Andre Fleury’s 1,000th career game and extended their point streak to eight with a 3-2 win against the Minnesota Wild at Xcel Energy Center on Sunday.

Fleury is the fourth goalie in NHL history to play in at least 1,000 games, joining Martin Brodeur (1,266), Roberto Luongo (1,044) and Patrick Roy (1,029). He is one win away from tying Roy (551) for second all-time.

“I don’t know, I’m kind of happy it’s over,” Fleury said. “I wish it was a win. Disappointing. I thought the guys played great tonight. Battled hard. It’s a better game than last night in Winnipeg (a 4-2 loss). Two points is what’s important here. Obviously, very flattered by the reception from the crowd, from my teammates. It means a lot. I feel very fortunate that I’ve played for so long and I got to do what I love for many years. I’m lucky for that.”

Dominic Toninato scored his first of the season for Winnipeg (22-9-4), which is 6-0-2 during its streak and 10-1-2 in its past 13 games. Laurent Brossoit made 24 saves.

“Going into both games (of the home-and-home), you knew it was going to be a hard-fought battle,” Jets coach Rick Bowness said. “There wasn’t much room out there. Kind of [a] low-event game for a while. That’s the way both teams play. John (Hynes) has got these guys playing really, really hard. They’re tough to play against.”

Marcus Foligno and Frederick Gaudreau scored for Minnesota (16-15-4), which had won seven straight at home. Fleury made 26 saves.

“It’s disappointing you lost the game, for sure, but there’s lot of positives to take out of it,” Hynes said. “As you said, just how hard we fought. I thought we were right there. We had an opportunity to win the game, but I think when you get into these tight games like this against a really good team, it comes down to details, and tonight that was probably the difference in the game.

Ryan Hartman appeared to give Minnesota a 1-0 lead at 16:44 of the first period, but Winnipeg successfully challenged for offside prior to the goal.

Foligno did put the Wild in front 1-0 at 18:07 when he tipped in Jared Spurgeon's point shot.

“Better effort (today),” Foligno said. “It’s a tough game to lose, but all in all, it was a good game. It had everything. It’s tough to lose it for 'Flower' like that in that sense, 1,000 games, [heck] of an accomplishment. You want to win it for him. Disappointing the way it had to end there.”

Lowry tied the game 1-1 at 2:08 of the second period, getting to a rebound and scoring with a backhand into an open net. It was his 100th NHL goal.

“It’s something I’ll look back on and be proud of,” Lowry said. “I’m not necessarily known really for my scoring, so it’s nice to be able to contribute once in a while. Hopefully, I can score another 100 in this league and it doesn’t take me a decade.”

Gaudreau responded for the Wild with a one-timer on the power play to make it 2-1 at 3:56 of the third period.

Vladislav Namestnikov scored 56 seconds later with his own power-play goal to tie it 2-2.

“There is never quit on this team,” Namestnikov said. “I think we know it’s a 60-minute game. A lot can happen in that time. We go down, we just keep with our business and keep going.”

Toninato put Winnipeg ahead 3-2 at 7:32 when he flipped in a rebound during a delayed penalty.

“You know what, even the run we’ve been on, there’s not a whole lot of separation in our division,” Lowry said. “We know how critical down the stretch divisional games are, and we know how hard it is to beat the same team on back-to-back nights. They make adjustments. Generally the team that lost comes out pretty hard and are able to rebound.

“They got off to a great start, credit to them, but we were able to fight our way back. Even in the third, we give up one on special teams, and that’s kind of been our Achilles' heel all year. We’ve talked about that being the difference in the game. But 'Vladdy' answers right back with a power-play goal of our own, and that gives us the momentum right back. And then on a delayed penalty we get the game-winning goal. It was big back-to-back nights for us.”

NOTES: The Jets are the fourth team in the expansion era (since 1967-68) to allow three or fewer goals in at least 25 consecutive games. The other teams to do so are the Blue Jackets (25 games in 2019-20), Wild (35 games in 2014-15) and Blues (27 games in 2011-12). … The Wild were without forwards Kirill Kaprizov (upper body) and Vinni Lettieri (upper body), and goaltender Filip Gustavsson (lower body), who were each injured in the game on Saturday. … Hynes said Lettieri is day-to-day but did not have updates on Kaprizov or Gustavsson.