Today as morning skate got underway in Winnipeg folks were looking to see if Rick Bowness was gonna be on the ice (he was) after needing to cut the road trip short to return to Manitoba to have a minor medica procedure and if Gabriel Vilardi would be skating (he was). However when line rushes began number 13 wasn’t taking them which isn’t a surprise given he’s been out of the lineup since the 3rd period of the game in Dallas against the Stars back on February 29th.
Photo Credit: Colby Spence (Illegal Curve)
After skate concluded we heard from Jets head coach Rick Bowness in the Matt Frost Media Centre and not surprisingly he was asked about his progress.
“Good. We haven’t seen him for a while. He didn’t come on the road trip with us. But I was out there early with him and he’s skating around and he looks good. Now we need to take him every day and get out coaches pushing him and finding out where he is conditioning wise and playing through any discomfort. We won’t know those things until we get him on the ice like today and push him and keep pushing him and see where he is.”
Follow-up question asked if Vilardi’s spleen was “back to normal”.
“Yes. And now we have to push him to see how much discomfort there’s going to be when we really push him. It’s one thing to be working out on your own and everything else but now you get one of our coaches pushing you and we know how far we can push him. We gotta find out.”
Asked what “pushing” means specifically he added.
“Yeah because we don’t have any practice time so it’s getting him out there like today and putting him through a bunch of different shooting drills and skating drills and see where his comfort level is and see where his conditioning level is.”
So while you shouldn’t expect Vilardi back immediately, including this evening against the Oilers, it’s a good sign he’s back on the ice with his teammates in a regular uniform.
