Nashville Predators at Winnipeg Jets

Kyle Connor has hat trick, Jets beat Predators 6-3 for 3rd straight win

Connor has 11 goals this season, five in the last two games.

“Great way to start a homestand, for sure,” Connor said. “We built off the end of that road trip. We came home, got off to a great start and got contributions from everybody. We played our systems really well — 5 on 5, we played really well.”

Cole Perfetti, Mason Appleton and Brenden Dillon also scored, Mark Scheifele had three assists and Laurent Brossoit made 20 saves. Winnipeg improved to 7-4-2.

Filip Forsberg scored twice for Nashville, Philip Tomasino added a goal and Juuse Saros made 31 saves. Nashville has lost two in a row and four of five to fall to 5-8-0.

“These are tough places to play,” Nashville coach Andrew Brunette said. “They are playing really well right now. We kind of fed into their game, but credit to them.

Winnipeg took a 3-1 lead early in the second period when Connor scored two goals just under three minutes apart. Connor took a pass from Scheifele and sniped a shot past Saros at 1:05 for the first. Then at the 3:48 mark, Connor was again on the receiving end of a pass from Scheifele, skated around thee defense and slid a backhand shot underneath Saros.

“I thought we played really well in the first period,” Forsberg said. “Then, all of a sudden, they get two early goals early in the second and a lot of penalties. That was definitely the theme of the night. It’s one of those games that could have gone either way, but it just goes the other way.”

Connor completed the hat trick and iced the contest with an empty-net goal in the third.

UP NEXT

Predators: Host Arizona on Saturday night.

Jets: Host Dallas on Saturday.

WPG leads series 1-0