Mercer and Daws help Winnipeg beat New Jersey in Hellebuyck’s return

Winnipeg had spent weeks absorbing the departure of the most successful goaltender in its NHL franchise history. On Tuesday, November 10, the Jets beat the team that acquired him, and two players who came the other way had a direct hand in the result. Dawson Mercer scored twice against his former club and Nico Daws made 19 saves as Winnipeg defeated the New Jersey Devils 4–2 at Canada Life Centre. Kyle Connor supplied the other two goals. Connor Hellebuyck, whose return had set the terms of the pregame conversation, backed up Jake Allen for New Jersey and stayed on the bench.

The game turned at 11:58 of the third period. With the score tied at 2–2 and New Jersey serving a bench minor, Alex Iafallo sent a backhand pass across the crease. Mercer finished from low in the left circle to restore Winnipeg’s lead. Connor added an empty-net goal with 58 seconds remaining. That sequence explains why the final margin needs a little unpacking. The Jets protected a one-goal advantage through the decisive stretch of the period, and the fourth goal came after New Jersey traded the protection of a goaltender for an extra skater.

How the Jets took the lead twice

Mercer’s first goal showed a different part of his game. At 7:54 of the opening period, he moved out of the corner toward the high slot, turned and got a wrist shot through bodies to beat Allen on the blocker side. A shooter coming out of the corner has to improve the angle before the defenders in front can reorganize. Mercer used his movement to get to a central area and released the puck quickly enough to preserve the opening. His winner later in the night depended on timing away from the puck and a pass delivered across the front of goal.

Winnipeg doubled the lead at 15:06 of the first period during a two-man advantage. The league’s account says Connor’s attempted pass from the right circle went in off the skate of defenseman Brenden Dillon. The bounce was fortunate, and the situation that produced it was valuable in its own right. With two extra skaters, Winnipeg had room to move the puck toward a defender who had to cover both a passing lane and the area in front of Allen. The Jets’ two power-play goals came from different sides of the ice and took different routes to the net.

New Jersey’s response arrived within the first two minutes of the second period. Arseny Gritsyuk won the puck behind the Winnipeg goal and found Jesper Bratt for a first-time finish at 1:14. At 1:58, Cody Glass redirected Johnathan Kovacevic’s shot to level the score. New Jersey had wiped out the entire deficit in 44 seconds. The two goals also illustrated different ways of making life difficult for a goaltender. Bratt received the puck in a shooting position from below the goal line. Glass changed its direction on the way in, shortening the time Daws had to react.

That stretch makes the third period more revealing. Winnipeg could have retreated after losing a lead it had held at the first intermission. Instead, the game stayed level until New Jersey’s bench penalty opened the door. Devils coach Sheldon Keefe identified the penalty and his team’s difficulty responding to Winnipeg’s third-period play as decisive in his postgame assessment to NHL.com. The penalty mattered because it gave Winnipeg an extra skater and stretched the four defenders’ assignments from the puck carrier to the receiving options across the ice. Iafallo exploited that distance with a short pass across a high-value area.

Two arrivals, with different roles

The October 23 trade involved considerably more than the two players who drove this result. Winnipeg received Mercer, Daws and forward Nick Bjugstad, the rights to unsigned prospect Alexander Command, a 2029 second-round pick and a 2027 seventh-round pick. New Jersey received Hellebuyck. Some of that return can be assessed shift by shift today, while the rights and draft picks will take longer to evaluate. Mercer’s goals and Daws’s first victory for the Jets offer an early look at the part of the deal Winnipeg can put directly into its lineup.

New Jersey selected Mercer 18th overall in the 2020 draft. The NHL’s trade report credited him with 103 goals and 110 assists in 420 games by the time of the move, and he had reached 20 goals in three of his first five seasons. He had played all 82 games the previous season and recorded 42 points. That record gives Winnipeg a useful frame for the two goals on Tuesday. The Jets added a forward with an established scoring record and a history of staying in the lineup. Against his old team he showed how that experience can translate into chances at even strength and on the power play.

Daws, chosen by the Devils in the third round of the same draft, entered the trade with 59 NHL appearances and 54 starts. His job on Tuesday changed after Glass scored. Two pucks had got past him within one minute, and a third would have given the Devils a lead they could manage from in front. He kept the score even until Winnipeg converted its opportunity in the third. Daws faced 21 shots and stopped 19. Allen stopped 21 shots at the other end. Counting Connor’s empty-net goal as part of Allen’s night would misstate what the two starting goaltenders did.

Hellebuyck’s absence from the crease still mattered to the evening’s atmosphere. The Canadian Press and Sportsnet reported a capacity crowd of 15,321. Hellebuyck had won 345 games and recorded 45 shutouts with the franchise, both club records. He had earned the Vezina Trophy three times and won the Hart Trophy in 2024–25. Those achievements explain why this first return attracted a level of attention well beyond two regular-season points. New Jersey started Allen after a decision by Keefe and general manager Sunny Mehta. The result records Allen as the goalie who faced Winnipeg, while the trade provides context for why the building was so animated.

The scale of the change is clearer against Winnipeg’s 2024–25 season. The Jets won the Presidents’ Trophy for the first time with 56 wins and 116 points, both franchise records. Hellebuyck won 47 of those games. He also became the first player in franchise history to receive the Hart Trophy. Those totals measure the role he played on a team with the league’s best regular-season record. The October trade returned help at several positions and in several draft years. Tuesday’s win offered a single-game view of what that distribution can look like, with one arrival in the crease and another contributing at both even strength and on the power play.

The names that stayed in Winnipeg

Winnipeg’s returning and established players helped give the newcomers room to make that impact. Cole Perfetti had two assists, and his three-game run with at least a point reached five points in total. Mark Scheifele’s assist on Connor’s first goal was the 550th of his career, according to the NHL. Scheifele and Connor have now figured on 66 of the same goals in the league’s comparison of Winnipeg teammates. Those figures describe a source of continuity on the roster: even after a major trade, Winnipeg could put established combinations on the ice and give its new forward a separate route to a decisive chance.

Connor reached another milestone on the empty-net goal. It gave him 55 NHL games with multiple goals, tying Scheifele in the club comparison carried by the league. Connor could contribute to the result in two distinct ways, working from the flank with the extra skaters early and finishing the last chance created by New Jersey’s late push. Defenseman Josh Morrissey also returned after an upper-body injury had cost him 14 games. He logged 24 minutes and six seconds and put four shots on goal, a substantial workload in a game that was tied deep into the third.

The scoring order also distinguishes the new production from the team’s existing strengths. Mercer opened the scoring at even strength and broke the tie on a power play. Connor scored once with two extra skaters and again with the other net empty. The final scoring line gives each forward two goals. The paths to those goals show where the Jets found leverage as the game changed. New Jersey’s best spell came through a retrieval below the goal line and a deflection in front. Winnipeg’s late advantage came through a penalty and then through the risks the visitors took while trying to equalize.

What the streaks say about the result

Winnipeg’s fourth consecutive win brought its record to 8–8–3. Before this stretch the Jets had gone nine games without a win, taking two of those losses beyond regulation. The points on Tuesday matter in that context. The Jets beat a team that had won five in a row, protected a tie after its lead disappeared, and took advantage of the chance created by a third-period penalty. Those are separate tasks within a game and each was visible on the ice. Four results remain a limited sample for judging how often Winnipeg can reproduce them.

New Jersey left Manitoba at 13–6–0. Jack Hughes extended his point streak to six games by assisting on Bratt’s goal, and the Devils’ response after the intermission showed how fast their attack could alter the match. Their five-game winning run ended because the next goal went to Winnipeg. Kovacevic, who supplied the shot that Glass redirected, departed in the second period after a collision. Keefe said after the game that imaging was planned, so the available reports established his exit and left the extent of the injury open.

The most durable question from the game is how the new pieces fit around the players already in place. Winnipeg can assess Mercer’s ability to get shots from the middle and to offer a target near the circle, Daws’s work after the tying goal, and the workload Morrissey was able to handle upon returning. New Jersey can examine how it defended across the crease while shorthanded and how the bench penalty arose in a tied third period. The October trade gave those details a larger audience. The score was decided by players on the ice and by decisions each team can review before the next time they meet.