It may have been ugly, but the Winnipeg Jets continued their push for a playoff spot with a 3-2 shootout victory over the Buffalo Sabres on Wednesday.

The Jets were outshot 37-27 on the night, but managed to post their third straight win and fifth in sixth games as they try to chase down a wild-card spot.

“We just need wins,” centre Pierre-Luc Dubois said. “It doesn’t matter how. I think we all agree that we can play better. We have to play better. But at the end of the day, we get the two points. And that’s what we need right now.”

Sabres head coach Don Granato pointed to Connor Hellebuyck as the difference maker Tuesday night. The Winnipeg goaltender managed to keep the game scoreless early as his team went without a shot until midway through the opening period and later stopped six shots in overtime, when the Jets managed just one.

"I felt that Hellebuyck was very good for them," Granato said. "We could've had some separation. There wasn't, and credit to him. I thought the skilled players for Winnipeg made a pretty good push in the third, and I thought (Sabres goaltender Craig Anderson) got to his game a little bit in the third. It was a hard-fought game, but yeah, we could've had some separation. We played very well early, and not that we did poorly late, but we played better early and couldn't get that separation."

With Wednesday's victory, the Jets moved to within two points of the Vegas Golden Knights for the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference with a game in hand. The Jets will have an opportunity get level with the Golden Knights with a win over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday.

Playing in the second half of a back-to-back set will be a challenge for a "tired" Jets team, though. 

"Not a great first period. I think we're still kind of a tired team," Jets captain Blake Wheeler said Wednesday. "We just played five games in [nine] days. … Hopefully, we can get back a little bit of jump in our step (Thursday). We've got two more games, two big games before we get a nice little break. We've just got to dig deep."