WINNIPEG, Manitoba (AP) — Tyler Toffoli scored his first two goals with Winnipeg and Laurent Brossoit stopped 21 shots for his second shutout of the season in the Jets’ 6-0 win over the Anaheim Ducks on Friday night.
Jets defenseman Dylan DeMelo snapped a 63-game goal-scoring drought and added an assist, and Kyle Connor, Nate Schmidt and Mason Appleton also scored for Winnipeg. Josh Morrissey had three assists and Nikolaj Ehlers added two for the Jets, who’ve alternated wins and losses their past five games.
Toffoli was playing his third game with the Jets since being acquired from New Jersey at the trade deadline.
“Definitely a special moment and, obviously, nice to get my first one here and, hopefully, keep rolling,” said Toffoli, who now has 28 goals and 46 points in 64 games this season. “I should have had four or five there by the end of it. … You know what, it was one of those games I thought we played really well. It was just a matter of time before we started kind of piling some on.”
The victory moved Winnipeg into a three-way tie with Dallas and Colorado atop the Central Division. The Jets have the tiebreaker for first place, having played two fewer games than the Stars and one fewer than the Avalanche,
Brossoit’s shutout was his fifth straight victory as a starter and he improved to 12-4-2. He hasn’t given up a goal in 141 minutes and 40 seconds, dating back to last Friday’s 3-0 shutout of Seattle and a 5-2 victory over Buffalo on March 3.
“It’s feeling pretty good and then, obviously, the team in front of me,” Brossoit said. “I’m going to try not to get too high on these because you know the opponents that I was playing in those two (shutouts).”
John Gibson stopped 32 shots for Anaheim, has lost five straight and was coming off a 2-0 loss at Minnesota on Thursday. Anaheim has been outscored 27-5 during its skid.
“It starts with me,” Ducks forward Troy Terry said. “We’ve just got to start getting more offense. We can’t keep making excuses for injuries and missing guys.”
Anaheim head coach Greg Cronin agreed scoring is in short supply.
“We won’t shoot the puck. We won’t do it,” Cronin said. “It’s been an ongoing problem. And when we do shoot it, we don’t get it through. It hits a stick or a shin pad and goes the other direction.”
Winnipeg led 1-0 after the first period and 2-0 following the second.
Gibson denied Mark Scheifele from in close about seven minutes into the first for an 8-1 lead in…