Jets blow lead late in third period and fall to Golden Knights in overtime

WINNIPEG — Josh Morrissey figured the hockey gods weren’t on the Winnipeg Jets’ side Thursday night.

The veteran defenceman gave the Jets a 2-1 lead midway through the third period against the Golden Knights, but a late five-on-three power-play goal by Vegas forward Victor Olofsson sent the game into overtime.

After a Winnipeg turnover, Ivan Barbashev scored at 3:47 of overtime when his 14th goal of the season beat Connor Hellebuyck to give the visitors a 3-2 victory.

“It certainly was not even close to our best game in the first two periods, but we were still up 1-0,” Morrissey said. “You go up 2-1 in the third period, and again I did think we got to our game a little better in the third.

“But they probably through the course of their first two periods, the hockey gods probably earned them those power plays when we didn’t have our best in the first two. You’d like to find a way to close it out even when you don’t have your best stuff.”

Keegan Kolesar also scored for the Golden Knights (19-7-3). Shea Theodore had a pair of assists and Adin Hill made 18 saves to extend their win streak to four games.

Nikita Chibrikov had the other goal for the Jets (21-9-1) and Hellebuyck made 33 saves.

Winnipeg was outshot 12-4 in the first period and 10-6 in the second.

After Morrissey scored at 10:55 of the third period, forward Gabriel Vilardi and defenceman Dylan DeMelo took costly tripping penalties late in regulation.

Vilardi was called at 17:20 and DeMelo was sent off 13 seconds later. It took Olofsson 38 seconds to tie it up.

“I’ve seen guys do a lot worse and not get a call, so that’s a tough pill to swallow,” DeMelo said. “We all know that at the end of games or overtime, it’s got to be pretty egregious to be a penalty and (the referee) deemed it so.”

Jets head coach Scott Arniel avoided commenting on the DeMelo call.

“I mean, Gabe's was a penalty. Two hundred feet from our net, that was a penalty,” Arniel said. “Not talking about the other one.”

The Jets were able to kill the second penalty to send it to overtime, but the extra session produced more errors. Defenceman Haydn Fleury created a turnover when he sent the puck toward a player who was leaving for a line change.

“I think that predominantly the whole overtime, we had the puck, which you like to do and you like to have,” Arniel said. "I mean, it would be nice if we got a couple more attempts at the goaltender, but we made probably a bad decision with the puck.

"We were kind of on a line change and we got caught."

The Jets have dropped their last eight regular-season games (0-6-2) to Vegas.

The Golden Knights were coming off a five-day break and head coach Bruce Cassidy was glad any rust wore off fast.

“I thought after the first period that we executed better and had our legs and hands (more) than I would have suspected,” he said. “We didn't give up much for two periods, but hung in there, got some calls late.

"We needed them, obviously, and our power play was able to connect there.”

Winnipeg, which was coming off an 8-1 victory over the Boston Bruins on Tuesday, struggled to put shots at Hill.

They went a span of 18:24 without a shot on goal, from late in the first period until 13:01 of the second, but picked up their play after that.

Arniel has been preaching about the importance of taking more shots for a while.

“When we talked about the success we had against Boston, we got into the attack mode,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 12, 2024.

Judy Owen, The Canadian Press