WINNIPEG -- Every hockey player wants to play well against their former team, but not all of them can pull a Lee Stempniak.

The New Jersey right winger scored a pair of goals -- on his only two shots of the game -- to propel the Devils to a 3-1 victory over the Winnipeg Jets at the MTS Centre on Saturday.

The 32-year-old was picked up from the New York Rangers during the Jets successful push for the playoffs last year and while he made a valuable contribution, scoring six goals and 10 points in 18 games, he wasn't offer a contract in the off-season.

So, yeah, you could say he enjoyed his return to Winnipeg, where his Jets jerseys can still be bought in the concourse of the MTS Centre.

"It's fun to be back. I enjoyed playing here, (I'm) friends with a lot of the guys. I have nothing but good memories and great things to say about the Jets organization," Stempniak said.

"It was a good team effort from us. It was a huge game, trying to separate ourselves from teams right around us clustered for a playoff spot. It was a great team effort, we got big blocked shots from guys (and got) good backchecks and great goaltending."

The win improved the Devils' record to 25-19-5, good for 55 points and allowed them to leapfrog the Pittsburgh Penguins into fourth place in the Atlantic Division and one of the wildcard spots.

The Jets, meanwhile, fell to 21-24-3 and 45 points and remain in the Central Division's basement with one win in their last six games.

The game was typical of the Devils' play for, oh, the last three decades or so. Score a goal and choke the life out of their opponents for the rest of the game with suffocating defensive play. Oh, and if you can capitalize on a few mistakes and add to your lead, all the better.

Need proof? The Devils entered the game 16-0-3 when scoring the game's first goal, which they did when Jets defenseman Toby Enstrom blew a tire and took out his right winger Blake Wheeler just inside the defensive zone, allowing Mike Cammalleri and Stempniak to break in all alone. Stempniak calmly tapped in his 13th of the season past Connor Hellebuyck on a goalmouth feed at 11:41 of the first period.

The Devils had 10 shots in the first period and six the rest of the game, scoring two more times.

Jets coach Paul Maurice could only shake his head when asked about Enstrom's misfortune.

"When you're scoring and winning, you laugh about that. Something unusual on the ice happens every 40 games or so. When you're struggling to score like we are, it's tough," he said.

Maurice was disappointed with the loss but couldn't fault his troops, who gave up four even strength shots and two more on the power play through the first two periods.

"We just didn't finish on a few chances. There weren't a lot (of chances) either way," he said.

Indeed, Jets right winger Drew Stafford, who returned to the line-up after missing a week with a lower-body injury, said he didn't think the Jets played a bad game.

"The only thing that was missing was the goal scoring," he said.

Devils coach John Hynes said he felt his team got off to a strong start and played a "pretty complete" 60 minutes.

"I thought there were times when Winnipeg had some strong pushes but we were able to respond better than we have in previous games," he said.

The lone bright spot for the Jets was their late goal by Dustin Byfuglien. The Jets all-star defenseman has been moved up to forward for the man advantage in practice over the last few days in an effort to improve the team's anemic special teams play.

He knocked home a backhand, his 12th of the season, just seconds into the Jets only power play of the night with just over five minutes to play in the game.

"It's just getting pucks to the net and it was over fast. It shows that it's not rocket science out there," he said.

NOTES: The Jets got good news from sick bay as C Alex Burmistrov and RW Drew Stafford returned to the lineup after missing the last week. ... The Devils came to town after two home wins, 4-2 over Calgary on Tuesday and 6-3 over Ottawa on Thursday. ... If the Jets could carry over their success against the Eastern Conference to the rest of the league, they'd be in a playoff spot. Winnipeg is 11-5-2 against teams from the East, including 7-3-0 against the Metropolitan Division. ... In the press box for the Jets as scratches were D Adam Postma, D Adam Pardy and C Patrice Cormier. Joining them from the Devils are C Stefan Matteau, C Tyler Kennedy and C Sergey Kalinin.