Scheifele Scores With 1.6 Seconds Left as Jets Edge Lightning 4-3

Mark Scheifele had 1.6 seconds to save the Winnipeg Jets, and he needed every tenth of one. With the clock bleeding away at Canada Life Centre and the Jets on a two-man advantage, Scheifele took a feed from Cole Perfetti and hammered a one-timer past Tampa Bay goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy, sealing a 4-3 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Sunday that looked secure, then lost, then rescued inside one chaotic third period.

The final 1.6 seconds

The winner arrived at 59:58 of the third period, the latest game-winning goal in regulation in the NHL since Ryan Graves scored at the same mark on February 14, 2023. It came after Tampa Bay's Yanni Gourde was penalised for tripping and Erik Cernak was called for closing his hand on the puck, handing Winnipeg a five-on-three advantage for the final minute. Scheifele, stationed at the left hash marks, converted Perfetti's pass with a one-timer that beat Vasilevskiy before the buzzer could deny him.

It was a fitting finish to a night in which Winnipeg's power play did the heavy lifting. The Jets finished three-for-five with the man advantage while Tampa Bay went zero-for-four, and three of Winnipeg's four goals came with an extra skater on the ice. Scheifele had already set up the opener, feeding Perfetti for a one-timer from between the hash marks at 1:53 of the second period, and he was the man the Jets looked to when the game was on the line.

A three-goal lead disappears

For most of the evening, the Jets looked in complete control. After Perfetti's opener, Neal Pionk circled behind the Tampa Bay net and carried the puck into the faceoff circle before sending a cross-ice pass to Morgan Barron, who hammered home a one-timer to double the lead. Early in the third period, rookie Brayden Yager made it 3-0 with his first NHL goal, finishing a slick between-the-legs feed from fellow rookie Viggo Bjorck on the power play.

Then the game turned. Brandon Hagel got Tampa Bay on the board after taking advantage of a Yager giveaway behind the Winnipeg net, and Pontus Holmberg did the rest. The Swedish forward, whose double-minor high-sticking penalty had led to Yager's goal, scored twice in 26 seconds — with 5:59 and 5:33 remaining — to tie the game 3-3 and silence the Winnipeg crowd. In the space of four minutes and seven seconds, the Lightning scored three times, a comfortable lead had become a tie game, and Tampa Bay, who had won three straight, looked the likelier winners.

A first NHL goal for Brayden Yager

Whatever happened after it, Yager's goal will stay with the 21-year-old forward. It was his first NHL goal and his first NHL point, scored with nine seconds left on the first minor of Holmberg's double-minor, and it capped a night in which Winnipeg's rookies were central to the story. Bjorck, who set up the goal with a no-look, one-touch pass between his own legs, finished with two assists, and Yager's grin afterwards told its own story. After relying on six different goal scorers in Thursday's win over Vancouver, the Jets got four goals from four different players against Tampa Bay.

Yager's evening was not without a blemish — his giveaway behind the net led directly to Hagel's goal — but the rookie kept playing, and his team rewarded him with a win that owed plenty to its youngest players.

What the win means

The victory extended Winnipeg's winning streak to three games and, just as importantly, followed a run of nine straight defeats that had dragged the Jets to 7-8-3. For a team that had forgotten how to win, three in a row is a start, and doing it the hard way — blowing a three-goal lead and still finding the winner — may matter more than a comfortable night would have. "We've got a lot of great guys on this team, guys with a lot of heart and a lot of skill," Scheifele said afterwards.

Tampa Bay, meanwhile, saw its three-game winning streak snapped and fell to 11-4-2 in the opener of a three-game road trip. The Lightning will look to respond at Buffalo on Wednesday, while the Jets turn to a Tuesday meeting with the New Jersey Devils — the team they traded goaltender Connor Hellebuyck to on October 23. Stuart Skinner made 18 saves for the win, while Vasilevskiy stopped 21 of 25 shots for Tampa Bay. The numbers, though, tell only part of the story. This was a game decided by 1.6 seconds, and by the one player Winnipeg trusts most when the clock is running out.