With Winnipeg being limited to signing a pair of goalies and a veteran Dman the local NHL club came up in conversation between former NHLer turned analyst Ray Ferraro and TSN hockey insider Darren Dreger following free agent frenzy on Monday.
Dreger kicked off the segment with this:
“Tough day for the Winnipeg Jets, by the way, they tried to extend Sean Monahan, that didn’t work, he goes to Columbus, they tried on Henrique as I mentioned in Headlines, that didn’t work, they tried on Lizotte, that didn’t work. So Chevy’s got some lifting to do here.”
We knew the Jets tried on Monahan and we knew, courtesy of Dreger on Monday afternoon, that they had been trying to get Henrique. The new name was Blake Lizotte formerly of the L.A. Kings who ended up signing a two-year deal with the Penguins at 1.85 million AAV.
It’s interesting that the Jets would be in on Lizotte given his history with players on the current team. Gabriel Vilardi blamed his recklessness for the knee injury he suffered in game 3 of the 2023-24 campaign and Lizotte also got suspended for one game when he cross-checked Josh Morrissey in the face during the 2022-23 season.
