On a milestone night for Dylan DeMelo, the stay-at-home defenceman earned himself quite the souvenir.
Playing in his 600th NHL game, the light-scoring blueliner scored the winner in the final minute of the game as the Winnipeg Jets edged the Seattle Kraken 2-1 Thursday night.
Seattle got the first power play of the game when Logan Stanley was given a questionable penalty for elbowing, and while the Jets managed to kill it off, it wasn’t long after the kill that the Kraken opened the scoring.
The play began innocuously as Seattle carried the puck out of their own end but the dynamic changed when Jaden Schwartz lobbed the puck into the Winnipeg end from the red line, giving Kaapo Kaako the chance to win a race to the puck against Kyle Connor. Connor sagged off, Kaako retrieved the puck and hit a wide open Matty Beniers in front of the net for the opener at the 8:12 mark.
Seattle wound up with an 11-8 edge in shots on goal heading to the second period, though Winnipeg started controlling more of the play as the middle frame rolled along, resulting in their first power play look with 10:59 remaining.
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Winnipeg won the ensuing faceoff and the league’s best power play went to work. Eventually, Josh Morrissey slid a pass to the right faceoff dot where Connor’s one-timer was stopped by Joey Daccord but the rebound bounced to the other dot where Mark Scheifele was waiting to blast the puck into the net for his 27th of the season, leveling the score 1-1.
A few minutes later, Winnipeg got a second power play of the period but Seattle managed to kill it off.
The Kraken nearly regained the lead with just over three minutes remaining in the period when Andre Burakovsky got loose behind the Jets defencemen as they changed but Connor Hellebuyck stopped him with a flashy glove save.
The game stayed tied 1-1 after a period in which the Jets outshot the Kraken 20-5.
Winnipeg continued to control play in the third and threatened to take the lead as both Logan Stanley and Adam Lowry rang shots off the crossbar but it stayed 1-1 deep into regulation before DeMelo took centre stage.
Adam Larsson had the puck in the corner and chipped it up the boards but it took a funky bounce off a stanchion and into the slot where Nikolaj Ehlers collected it. He held onto the puck for a moment, turned and noticed DeMelo open at the point. DeMelo got the puck, saw that Daccord was screened and ripped a shot high over Daccord’s glove for his second goal of the season and 19th of his career.
The goal was also his second game-winning goal of the season and third of his career.
Hellebuyck only had to turn aside 18 shots in the game as Winnipeg outshot Seattle 28-8 over the final 40 minutes.
The Jets wrap up this season-long eight-game homestand Saturday night when they host the Calgary Flames.
