2021 Stanley Cup Playoffs: Jets vs Canadiens pre-game 1 report

Picture it: Winnipeg 2021 with the Jets and Habs getting set to do battle to establish who will be king of the north in their second round series which gets underway tonight.

Morning skate:

As per Ken Wiebe of Sportsnet it was an optional morning skate who adds this:

Kristian Vesalainen, Jordie Benn and Ville Heinola stay on for extra work with Laurent Brossoit and Eric Comrie. Would imagine that means F Dominic Toninato will at least take the warmup tonight for Game 1

Lineup:

Paul Maurice wouldn’t bite on a question about his lineup during his morning availability.  He was also asked if he was planning on having any guys take warm up and said they have players available but he hadn’t decided if any would take warm up.  Which basically translates to stay tuned to around 6 PM when the players take the ice for warm up to see if there are any changes. For now the projected lineup will be based on practice.

Warm up skate:

No Paul Stastny which means Dominic Toninato returns.

Jets projected lines & D pairs:

Connor-Scheifele-Wheeler
Copp-Dubois-Ehlers
Perreault-Lowry-Appleton
Toninato-Thompson-Lewis

Morrissey-DeMelo
Forbort-Pionk
Stanley-Poolman

Hellebuyck
Brossoit

Canadiens projected lines & D pairs:

Via Arpon Basu of The Athletic Montreal the Habs will run with the same lines as how they closed out the Leafs in game 7.

Evans-Danault-Gallagher
Toffoli-Suzuki-Caufield
Byron-Kotkaniemi-Anderson
Armia-Staal-Perry

Chiarot-Weber
Edmundson-Petry
Kulak-Gustafsson

Price
Allen

Players media availability:

Coach media availability:

Topics:

1) What it will mean to have fans in the building.
2) Montreal defence.
3) Will any extras take warmup?
4) Need for patience in the game.
5) How much importance is there on game 1 given the history?
6) Avoiding the Canadiens being allowed to feed off their forecheck and turnovers.
7) How does he view Montreal’s offence?
8) Might the 3rd and 4th lines have a big impact for his team?
9) How will his team handle increased physicality in this series?

Up Next:

Puck drop is at 6:30 pm CDT.  Be sure to head over to illegalcurve.com following the game for a recap of the action which includes post-game interviews from Jets players as well as from head coach Paul Maurice.  You can also join us afterwards on the Illegal Curve Post-Game Show here (be sure to smash that like/subscribe button).