THREE THINGS: Vilardi scores twice, Jets lose to Caps

The Winnipeg Jets came close to completing the comeback at the end of the third period but fell 4-3 to the Washington Capitals at Capital One Arena. Kyle Connor had three assists, Gabe Vilardi had two goals, and Mark Scheifele scored the other goal for the Jets who are now 12-10 on the season. Josh Morrissey had an assist and now has 21 points (5G, 16A) in his last 15 games. Eric Comrie made 30 saves. The Jets will travel to Raleigh, North Carolina and will face the Carolina Hurricanes on Friday.

TOP LINE PROVIDING THE OFFENCE

Gabe Vilardi had two glorious scoring chances on Sunday during the Jets 3-0 loss to Minnesota but just had no puck luck. That changed on Wednesday with Winnipeg trailing 2-0 in the first period when Kyle Connor picked off a John Carlson pass and sent the puck out front to Vilardi and he tapped in his ninth of the season.

Winnipeg’s power play went to work in the early part of the second period, and it was Vilardi getting his 10^th of the season and 100^th of his career. The Jets power play has at least one power play goal in six of their last seven games.

With the Jets down 4-2 in the third, they pulled to within one as Mark Scheifele, who had numerous scoring chances earlier in the game, got his team leading 12th of the season.

SECONDARY SCORING

In an effort to get some offence from somewhere other than the top line, Scott Arniel juggled his lines moving Vlad Namestnikov to the middle with Cole Perfetti and Tanner Pearson. Jonathan Toews centred Morgan Barron and Gustav Nyquist and Adam Lowry was with Nino Niederreiter and Alex Iafallo. According to Natural Stat Trick, with scoring chances for and against for those three lines, it was 12-7 in favour of Washington.

"We battle right to the end. Got to find a way to get some secondary scoring. And we were obviously Scheif's line did it again tonight, and we need other people to step up," said Scott Arniel.

And it's not being it's not about being pretty now. It's about, I don't care how it goes in, off your head, off your leg, however, it might be rebounds, whatever deflections. We got to find a way."

SALOMONSSON DEBUT

The Jets had high hopes for Elias Salomonsson when they selected him in the second round of the 2022 NHL Draft. With Neal Pionk being out day-to-day with a lower body injury, Salomonsson was recalled and made his NHL debut this evening. Salomonsson was paired with Dylan Samberg on the Jets second pairing and had 16:18 of ice time, with 1 block and two hits.

"Yeah, there was a lot of nerves, of course," said Salomonsson.

"But you settle in as the game went on there. It was a lot of fun."