Leafs win showdown with Jets

NAZEM KADRI SCORES FIRST OF SEASON, MAPLE LEAFS BEAT JETS 4-2

Nazem Kadri finally broke his scoring drought with what turned out to be an important goal.

Kadri’s first of the season stood up as the winner and the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Winnipeg Jets 4-2 Wednesday.

“We need him to score and he knows that. So it’s good he stuck with it and kept working and now it will start going in,” said Leafs coach Mike Babcock.

Kasperi Kapanen, Tyler Ennis and John Tavares also scored for the Leafs (7-3-0), who host Winnipeg Saturday. Nikolaj Ehlers and Mark Scheifele scored in the third period for the Jets (6-3-1).

Frederik Andersen stopped 38 shots for the win while Connor Hellebuyck made 35 saves in defeat.

“It’s real simple for us,” said Babcock, as the Leafs ended a two-game losing streak. “If you want to play right and you want to play hard, suddenly you look fast again. We’ve looked real slow the last two games, we didn’t come out of our own zone.”

Winnipeg wrapped up its six-game homestand 4-1-1 and now hit the road with stops in Detroit Friday, Toronto Saturday and then a long haul across the Atlantic to Helsinki, Finland, for games Nov. 1-2 against the Florida Panthers.

Jets coach Paul Maurice said he wasn’t upset with missed opportunities on Wednesday with 40 shots on net.

“We’re more concerned with our defending than anything else,” he said.

“Anything that we had clean that we could look at, we missed the net 11 times in the second period, and that keeps you from feeling good about your offensive game. It’s more the defensive plays and the turnovers in our end of the ice. If you’re unable to recover from those, you’ve got to look at your problem.

“You’re in the wrong spots or you haven’t shut down hard enough to close out the goals. The first two, for me, we can be a better defensive team than that.”