The Winnipeg Jets avoided a three-game losing streak, as well as keeping pace with both the St. Louis Blues and Nashville Predators, by defeating the Edmonton Oilers, 4-3 at the Bell MTS Centre.
The bad news is, the Jets lost the "irreplaceable" Mark Scheifele for the next six to eight weeks with a shoulder injury.
That is not good. That is a very significant loss to their line-up.
Bryan Little made franchise history by becoming the Winnipeg Jets/Atlanta Thrashers all-time games played leader with 710 games played, surpassing Chris Thorburn, who was left unprotected by the Jets during last summer's NHL expansion draft, stocking the cubbard Golden Knights.
The Oilers opened the scoring on a two-man, short-handed breakaway, when Connor McDavid dished a nice unselfish pass to Leon Draisaitl that got over the outstretched pad of Connor Hellebuyck.
Joel Armia scored twice for his fifth and sixth of the year; his second coming on a breakaway due to a beautiful read right from the face-off in the Jets end, when he stole the puck at the blue-line and raced in to beat Cam Talbot low, glove side.
But this victory was seemingly forgotten by the injury of Scheifele, who fell awkwardly into the boards after being checked by Oilers defenseman, Brandon Davidson. Scheifele left the game 7:37 into the second period and is yet to be evaluated by doctors outside of the team's own physician. As of now, it is being described as a "significant upper-body injury."
Also scoring for the Jets were Kyle Connor with his 11th, on a nice goal-mouth dish from Blake Wheeler and Little, accentuating his record-setting night. It was Little's sixth of the season.
