The Jets are in New Jersey today for a practice as they get ready to play the Rangers tomorrow night at MSG.
Practice Notes:
As per Ken Wiebe of the Winnipeg Sun Jacob Trouba, Adam Lowry and Shawn Matthias are wearing non-contact jerseys while Tobias Enstrom and Steve Mason have joined their teammates for today’s skate. Not present according to Ken are Connor Hellebuyck, Dustin Byfuglien, Tyler Myers, Mathieu Perreault or Matt Hendricks and Marko Dano is filling in on defence.
Audio:
Steve Mason
Brandon Tanev
Patrik Laine
Coach Maurice: On Laine being named Second Star of the Week. What has caught his eye about the Ehlers/Stastny/Laine line in the games they’ve played together? On the players who didn’t skate today. On the plan with Steve Mason. Status of Tobias Enstrom? As a coach how does he strike a balance between keeping a hot lineup vs putting in a Tanev who was effective before injury? What is it like as a coach seeing the internal competition? More on the lineup considerations. Does he anticipate coaches having a tough time trying to decide which of his lines to use their checking line/top defenders against? On the Rangers.
Audio courtesy of TSN 1290 Winnipeg.
Health Updates:
On the missing players from today’s skate coach Maurice indicated “Everything is minor maintenance. It’s kind of an optional on one of the two days. Anybody who didn’t feel 100% could get rehab this morning but we don’t have any changes to our lineup right now.”
With respect to the status of Tobias Enstrom the Jets bench boss said “I don’t know yet. We want to see how he comes off the ice and then we want to see what 24 hours does to his injury. I just want to be sure. Toby is a really tough player and he’s played with significant injuries over the last three years so you have to kind of factor his threshold, and he’ll walk in and say he’s fine. But he skated today, he skated non-contact today, he’ll get consideration”.
Activated/Re-assigned:
As expected the Jets have activated Steve Mason from IR after he spent the weekend with the Moose on a conditioning assignment. As a result of the activation the team has re-assigned Michael Hutchinson to the Moose. Hutchinson was 2-0 with the Jets after he was called back up to the big club with a 2.00 GAA and a .933 save %.
This move certainly bolsters the Moose goalie tandem with Eric Comrie and now Michael Hutchinson. At the time he was recalled by the Jets he was one of the top goalies in the AHL and had won back to back goalie of the month awards in November and December. I suspect this means we will see Jaime Phillips sent back to the Icemen of the ECHL although as of this time Manitoba hasn’t sent out a press release. Phillips is a 2012 7th round pick of the Jets who got into nine games with the Moose this season, which included six straight games when Eric Comrie was called up by Winnipeg.
