Brett Howden scored twice, while Ivan Barbashev potted the winner for Vegas, as the Golden Knights took a commanding 3-1 series lead over the Winnipeg Jets by a score of 4-2 at Canada Life Centre on Monday night.
After opening their best-of-seven, opening round playoff series with a lopsided victory over Vegas, the Jets have dropped three-straight, including two in row in front of the Winnipeg Whiteout.
Already down forwards Nikolaj Ehlers and Cole Perfetti, Winnipeg also began Monday's contest without its best defenceman, as Josh Morrissey was ruled out for the series following a lower-body injury suffered on his first shift on Saturday.
And then things got worse.
Star centre Mark Scheifele left the game after two shifts, following a heavy collision with the end boards. He did not return, with the team citing an upper-body injury.
Once again, Winnipeg was forced to run a shorthanded lineup for 95 percent of the game.
“The team played hard, our team played very hard tonight," Jets head coach Rick Bowness said. "We adjusted, and we’ve been through this before early in the year when we had five or six guys out, key guys out. And now we’re faced with it again."
The Jets opened the scoring on Monday, with Blake Wheeler potting a power play marker just 5:53 in. With Alec Martinez in the box for interfering with Pierre-Luc Dubois, Wheeler took a Neal Pionk pass and made the visitors pay, scoring just 1:01 into the man advantage.
The goal was Wheeler’s second of the postseason. Nino Niederreiter picked up the secondary assist on the play.
But much like that his fellow Manitobans in the games prior, the Oakbank product Howden tied things up midway through the frame. After Pionk blocked his initial shot, Howden grabbed his rebound and put it past an out-of-position Hellebuyck, tying the game with 10:07 left to play.
Vegas held a slight 10-8 shot advantage through 20 minutes of play.
But once again, the second period proved disastrous for Winnipeg.
The Golden Knights scored twice in a span of 47 seconds, pulling ahead 3-1 as time ticked down in the middle stanza.
Vegas pulled ahead moments after the conclusion of a Dubois tripping minor. It was forward William Karlsson, who ran over Hellebuyck, before using his skate to redirect a Jonathan Marchessault shot into the net. Despite a review, the goal stood and Vegas took its first lead of the game.
Less than a minute later, Ivan Barbashev made things significantly harder for Winnipeg. He gave the visitors a 3-1 lead as he redirected a long-range Shea Theodore shot with 5:41 left to play.
For the second-straight game, the Jets entered the third period down by multiple goals.
This time, however, there would be no miraculous comeback.
“It’s unfortunate obviously to lose Mark, a guy we really rely on," Wheeler said. "The guys battled extremely hard. We just couldn’t get a bounce five-on-five. (At) five-on-five we really liked our game. We had some really good looks. I suppose we got a really good bounce on the power play. We liked a lot of what we saw five on five. We just couldn’t get the extra one when we needed it."
With Game 3 hero Michael Amadio in the box for holding, the Jets found another power play marker. And it may have been the strangest goal ever scored at Canada Life Centre.
The initial shot came from Wheeler, which deflected straight up in the air. All of Brossoit, Pietrangelo, Dubois and Niederreiter lunged in the air for the puck. It deflected off the body of Pietrangelo and fell over the shoulder of Brossoit and into the net below, bringing Winnipeg to within one goal just three minutes into the period.
“That was a weird one," Dubois laughed. "It got us back in within one. When you’re down two or three, you can’t be thinking about scoring three goals or two goals, you got to be thinking of scoring one at a time and that gave us an opportunity to get within one.”
Despite an onslaught of shots, the Jets were just unable to get a third puck past Brossoit.
Vegas killed off the remaining minutes, despite an extra attacker for the Jets. Brett Howden sealed it with an empty-netter with 16 seconds remaining.
The Vegas netminder finished the game with 24 saves on 26 Winnipeg shots, while Hellebuyck made 26 stops on the 29 pucks he faced.
Post-game, Bowness said that Scheifele's injury was that of the upper-body variety, and he would be evaluated on Tuesday.
"We’ll find a way," Bowness added. "We fought through this before. Are we missing some keys guys? Yep. We’ll find a way to win that game on Thursday.”
The teams will now have an additional day between games, as the series shifts to Vegas for Game 5 on Thursday night. Puck drop is set for 9:00 PM central time. Should the Jets pull off another road win, Game 6 will be held at Canada Life Centre on Saturday.
"We have two options," Dubois said. "We can either feel bad for ourselves, or we can have a positive mindset. We won one in Vegas before. We feel like we have the recipe to do it again."