Winnipeg Jets trailed 4-0 with 2:39 left and won. Latest comeback ever

How the Jets came back from 4-0 down with 2:39 left

With 2:39 left in the third period Tuesday night, the Winnipeg Jets trailed the Montreal Canadiens 4-0 at the Bell Centre. They won 5-4 in overtime. It is the latest four-goal comeback win in NHL history, and it came from a team that had not won a game in nine tries.

Tyrel Bauer started it at 17:21 of the third with his first NHL goal. Morgan Barron made it 4-2 at 18:03, off the crossbar and in. With Stuart Skinner pulled, Kyle Connor scored with exactly a minute left, then tied it with 33 seconds left on the power play, off Noah Dobson's stick. Four goals in 2:06, the fastest four in franchise history. The old mark of 2:16 had stood since Nov. 9, 1984.

Who won the game in overtime for Winnipeg?

Dylan Samberg finished it 3:30 into overtime. Gabriel Vilardi took the puck from Lane Hutson along the boards, Adam Lowry fed Samberg, and Samberg beat Jacob Fowler on the blocker side from the right circle.

Fowler deserves his own paragraph. The Canadiens goalie stopped the first 37 shots he saw and finished with 42 saves. He had a shutout with less than three minutes to play and took the loss. That is how strange this game was.

How does it compare to the old NHL record?

The previous latest four-goal comeback belonged to the Los Angeles Kings, who started theirs against Dallas at 52:46 of the game on Nov. 10, 2007. Winnipeg started its comeback at 57:21. That is 4:35 later than anybody had ever done it.

Now look at where this team was. The Jets had gone 0-7-2 over nine games. They lost 7-0 at Carolina on Sunday. They were 0-5-0 in their last five coming in, scoring 1.6 goals a game and allowing 5 per Last Call game data. Their last goal before Bauer came from Barron at 8:46 of the third period in Florida on Oct. 30. Add up the rest of that game, all 60 minutes in Carolina and the first 57:21 on Tuesday, and you get 128 straight minutes without a goal. Then four in 2:06.

Was this a Montreal collapse or a Winnipeg win?

Here is the fair side for the Canadiens. Montreal had won five straight and was 9-3-2 coming in. One bad stretch does not change that, and Cole Caufield scored two power-play goals to build the lead. Winnipeg is still 5-8-3 after this win. A comeback does not fix a losing record, and the Jets have plenty of hockey left to prove anything.

But do not call it a fluke. Winnipeg outshot Montreal 47-22 and had 86 shot attempts, according to coach Scott Arniel. Martin St. Louis saw it too: "we were winning but we weren't beating them." The Jets played a good game for 57 minutes and had nothing to show for it. Then the puck started going in.

Name a better regular season comeback

The record book says nobody has done this as late, and that settles the math. The argument at the bar is different. You have a team on a nine-game skid, a first NHL goal to start it, a goalie 37 saves into a shutout, the star scoring twice in the final minute, and an overtime winner from a defenseman on the road in Montreal. Give us one that beats it. The floor is open.