Jordan Staal scored twice to lead the Carolina Hurricanes to a hard-fought 4-3 road win over the Winnipeg Jets on Friday.
The Jets’ day started sour when it was announced that goaltender Connor Hellebuyck would miss four to six weeks due to knee surgery, and things worsened once the puck dropped.
Brandon Bussi earned his fifth win of the season with 24 saves. Seth Jarvis and Andrei Svechnikov both scored in the win, while Sebastian Aho collected two assists.
Gabriel Vilardi buried a pair and Josh Morrissey rounded out the scoring for the Jets.
The Hurricanes struck early as Staal stunned the home crowd with some slick stickhandling before sending his wrist shot into the back of the net just 16 seconds into the contest.
Morrissey swiftly evened up the scoring at 16:23 of the first period as he took a pass from Mark Scheifele and sent it past Bussi to extend his point streak to seven games (four goals, seven assists).
The Jets then took the lead when Cole Perfetti got loose on a breakaway with Vilardi and passed to his winger, who scored on the power play to give Winnipeg a 2-1 lead.
Nikolaj Ehlers nearly scored in his long-awaited return to Winnipeg, but his former teammate Dylan Demelo batted the puck out of midair to keep it out of the net with 7:21 left in the opening frame.
Staal notched his second goal of the game just over three minutes into the second period after some beautiful passing from the Hurricanes.
Aho was unable to score on a short-handed breakaway, but Jarvis buried the rebound to give the Hurricanes the 3-2 lead with 13:29 left in the middle frame.
Ehlers finally got his point as he sent a perfect pass to Svechnikov, who made no mistake on his one-timer to stretch the Hurricanes’ lead to 4-2 just over three minutes into the third period.
Vilardi was quick to answer, though, as his attempted pass to Kyle Connor banked off a Hurricanes’ defender and into the back of the net for his second goal of the contest with 15:47 left in the third.
The Jets had a plethora of opportunities to knot things up late, but the Hurricanes held on for the victory.
