Just 2:55 into the first period, Jets defenseman Elias Salomonsson was hit hard in the end boards by Panthers forward Carter Verhaeghe. There was no point in the game and Salomonsson was absent for a while before heading to the dressing room. Fortunately, the 21-year-old returned to the ice during a stoppage in play to test things out and eventually returned to the game.
Florida took a 1-0 lead at the 2:40 mark of the first period, just five seconds after Logan Stanley’s cross-check minor expired. Panthers forward Evan Rodrigues fired a wrist shot from just above the right circle that deflected off Eetu Luostarinen, who screened Eric Comrie at the side of the net, for Luostarinen’s sixth of the season.
It seemed like another one of those games where the Jets couldn’t find the back of the net, but after 48:34 of hockey, Cole Perfetti tied things up with his fifth goal of the year. After Gabriel Vilardi was stopped by Sergei Bobrovsky on a drive to the net, the puck came loose and Perfetti tapped in the rebound. It was his second goal against Florida in the past nine days.
“Yes, it’s obviously a good feeling. Like you said, I had a lot of chances there earlier in the game and couldn’t find them,” Perfetti said. “So just keep going to the net, try to generate and get those chances, and go to the net and get rewarded. So it felt good.”
Mark Scheifele gave the Jets their first lead at 15:46 after a great passing game involving Scheifele, Kyle Connor and Gustav Nyquist. Nyquist carried the puck into Florida’s zone and sent it low to Connor, who then extended an ice pass to Scheifele. Scheifele beat Bobrovsky over the gauntlet for his 27th of the season.
Winnipeg was able to win the second game of the last three and improve to 22-25-7 as Eric Comrie continued his dominance between the pipes, stopping 27 shots. Comrie has now gone 3-0-0 in his last three starts, with a .960 save percentage and a 1.00 goals-against average.
“I felt good. I feel like I’m not pushing the issue. Earlier I pushed the issue a little bit, trying to do a little too much. Trying too hard is a weird way of putting it, but I feel like I was trying too hard,” Comrie said. “I was putting a lot of pressure on myself, trying to do too much instead of just letting things happen and playing my game. I feel like I’m back to just, hey, relax, you don’t have to put pressure on yourself.”
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