Kyle Connor scored his 47th goal of the season at 9:05 of the third period to lead the Winnipeg Jets to a season-ending 4-3 victory over the Seattle Kraken on Sunday.
Morgan Barron, Blake Wheeler, and Dominic Toninato also scored for Winnipeg (39-32-11), which missed the playoffs but ended the season with a perfect four-game homestand. Eric Comrie made 27 saves.
“We can no longer call ourselves contenders,” Wheeler said. “I think we are one of those teams that is a fringe playoff team now. It’s up to everyone involved to look in the mirror and say, ‘Why? Why did we get to where we’re at?’ Our players are responsible for bringing that quality of play to the ice so we can contend and compete for a championship.”
Alex Wennberg had a goal and an assist for Seattle (27-49-6), with Daniel Sprong and Riley Sheahan scoring. Chris Driedger stopped 23 shots.
“There are a lot of pieces to our game that we’ve really liked over the stretch here coming down the last two months,” Seattle head coach Dave Hakstol said. “Those are the pieces we will take. We will start digging in and re-evaluating things, and that process starts (Monday).”
The game was rescheduled due to a storm in Winnipeg last month and was the only game on the schedule, two days after the rest of the league wrapped up the regular season.
The Jets faced numerous challenges this season, including weather disruptions, COVID-19, injuries, and a mid-season coaching change. Dave Lowry became interim head coach on Dec. 17 after Paul Maurice resigned, and the team finished with a 26-22-6 record.
“It’s definitely a year I’ll try to forget a little bit,” said Jets center Mark Scheifele, who missed the final nine games with an upper-body injury but finished with 29 goals and 70 points in 67 games. “It was a tough one from a lot of things – COVID, injuries, coach leaving, a new coach coming in, all that stuff.”
Lowry noted the team’s inconsistency and the need for changes.
“If I stood up here today and said that we’re not going to make any changes, well, what we were doing didn’t work,” Lowry said. “We’re going to have to make some adjustments. Do we need to overhaul everything completely? I don’t think so. But yeah, we’re going to have to make some changes.”
Winnipeg led 1-0 after the first period, but Seattle went ahead 3-1 entering the third.
Wennberg began the Kraken’s scoring with his 11th of the season 22 seconds into a power play at 5:55 of the second period. Sprong made it 2-1 at 12:24 with a shot that beat Comrie to the glove side, followed by Sheahan’s goal 55 seconds later for a two-goal lead.
Winnipeg then broke through with three goals early in the third.
Jets center Paul Stastny recorded his 800th career point when he won a faceoff and got the puck back to Wheeler, who sent a one-timer past Driedger at 4:49, marking the fourth straight game that Wheeler had scored.
Toninato tied it 3-3 at 7:16, earning Barron an assist. Connor then scored the go-ahead goal less than two minutes later.
Barron had scored his second goal of the season 3:47 into the game to give the Jets a 1-0 lead.
