The Jets began their first round of re-assignments yesterday sending four players back to their respective junior clubs leaving the team with 49 players in camp. Coach Maurice was clear that last night’s game in Minnesota and tomorrow’s in Edmonton will be the opportunity for players to show the coaching staff what they can do before Winnipeg gets to a “thin group”. Ken Wiebe of the Winnipeg Sun in his column on Thursday indicated that the Jets are “expected to make significant cuts on either Sunday or Monday”.
Following the 1-0 loss to the Wild on Thursday the Jets bench boss spoke about why he was bringing retired referee Paul Devorski to Jets training camp and the importance it has with a team that took as many penalties as the Jets have taken the past few years. Maurice indicated about today’s skate “…it will be a heavy day for us. There will be a lot of grind, a lot of one on ones, they will get a little bit fatigued and that is where you start to see penalties. He is going to interact with the players and when he sees something on the ice that he’d consider calling he will be able to go over and talk to them. It is completely educational…….this will be a really good opportunity for our players to pick the brain and also have a guy who does it for a living, did it for a living help us with that standard.”.
Today the Jets PR twitter account indicated that they have adjusted the previously scheduled training camp ice times (group 1 was to be on the ice at 9 am and group 2 at 12 pm). Instead group 1 will have off-ice training while group 2 will go at 12:30 pm. This could be a good indicator of who will be heading back to their junior clubs or to the Manitoba Moose of the AHL.
Group 1: Comrie, Sgarbossa, Schilling, Robinson, Cormier*, Lodge, Lipon, Lemieux, Sutter, Phillips, Dano, Harkins, *Gotovets, Nogier, Stanley, Melchiori, De Leo, Spacek, Appleton, Niku, *Stoykewych and *Beauvvillier. (17)*
Group 2: Poolman, Kulikov, Chiarot, Trouba, Copp, Tanev, Hendricks, Matthias, Lowry, Little, Petan, Wheeler, Ehlers, Laine, Byfuglien, Hutchinson, Mason, Hellebuyck, Enstrom, Armia, Morrissey, Roslovic, Scheifele, Myers, Connor and Perreault (26)
Jan Kostalek is injured still so he is not listed but you can lump him in with group one I would expect.
Of course some of the bubble players will still have an opportunity to prove themselves on Saturday when they head to Alberta to take on the Oilers but the likelihood is coach Maurice knows the composition of his final group.
As always stay tuned for the latest Winnipeg Jets and Manitoba Moose news by keeping it locked to illegalcurve.com and on social media including Twitter | Facebook | Instagram. And you can follow me on twitter as well (@icdave).
Update: The five players in group 1 who have been struck though were re-assigned to the Moose after this post went live.
