"I'm just trying to be myself, I think," Tavares said. "Be productive and consistently continue to evolve my game over my career. And obviously, finding some pretty good players, and we've got a good team. Continuing to read off of them, using my skill set to continue trying to make them better and then make plays and contribute when those opportunities come."
Auston Matthews had three assists, and Ilya Samsonov made 31 saves for the Maple Leafs (4-2-0).
Pierre-Luc Dubois scored, and Connor Hellebuyck made 24 saves for the Jets (2-3-0).
Bowness had missed Winnipeg's first four games after testing positive for COVID-19. Assistant coach Scott Arniel ran the team in his absence.
"We've been together, this group has been sticking together the whole [of] training camp and every game," Bowness said. "We will battle for each other. We did it again tonight and we will do it every game. So I think this group is together, they will continue to fight together and turn this thing around."
Dubois made it 1-0 at 4:17 of the first period, scoring on his own rebound.
"They played a good game. They're obviously a good team," Dubois said. "They jammed that neutral zone pretty well. Instead of trying to get it behind them, we tried to keep making plays, turn it over, and they're back in our zone getting scoring chances. … Sometimes we didn't have an answer, and that's something that hurt us tonight."