Mercer's First as a Jet Sparks Winnipeg's 6-2 Rout of Reeling Canucks

Dawson Mercer picked a good night for his first goal as a Winnipeg Jet. On Thursday at Canada Life Centre, with the Jets desperate to prove that their season was not slipping away, Mercer scored the goal that stood as the winner in a 6-2 rout of Vancouver — and Winnipeg suddenly has something it has not had in weeks: momentum. The Jets came flying out of the gate. Alex Iafallo tipped one in on the power play at 3:49, and Cole Koepke followed 14 seconds later to make it 2-0 before the crowd of 13,312 had settled in. Liam Öhgren pulled one back for Vancouver at 6:51, but Mercer answered at 14:04 of the first, finishing a one-timer off a Cole Perfetti pass from behind the net for his first goal of the season and his first in a Jets uniform. It was 3-1, and it was the goal that decided the game. Winnipeg never looked back. Neal Pionk scored at 6:52 of the second, Mark Scheifele made it 5-1 at 11:36 with a one-handed flick, and Mario Ferraro added the sixth at 11:32 of the third. Brock Boeser scored for Vancouver at 15:09, but by then the night was long decided. Six different Jets scored. Scheifele and Mercer each had a goal and an assist, Kyle Connor and Dylan DeMelo each had two assists, and Stuart Skinner made 24 saves. Leevi Meriläinen stopped 23 of 29 for Vancouver. For the Jets, now 6-8-3, it is a second straight win — and it comes days after Tuesday's remarkable comeback from 4-0 down in the final 2:39 to beat Montreal 5-4 in overtime. A team that was in a nine-game skid a week ago is suddenly playing with belief again. Eighteen-year-old Viggo Björck even earned his first NHL point with an assist on Scheifele's goal, a small milestone on a night full of them. For Vancouver, the picture is grim. The Canucks fell to 3-14-1, having lost 14 of their last 15, and the numbers are ugly: 22 giveaways to three takeaways on the night, a fourth straight defeat, and a season drifting badly off course. The Jets, for one night at least, looked like a team going somewhere. The Canucks looked like a team still searching for a way out. For Winnipeg, the turnaround is real but fragile: two wins after a nine-game skid, and a comeback for the ages against Montreal in between. The challenge now is to make it last, to turn a good week into a good month. For Vancouver, the questions are harder — 14 losses in 15 games is not a slump, it is a crisis, and a team that gives the puck away 22 times in a night is a team that needs more than a bounce to turn things around.