Game 11: Jets vs. Wild pre-game report

The Jets are in St. Paul to take on the Wild in the second installment of Friendly Manitoba vs. Minnesota Nice.  This is just the second central division game for Winnipeg.  Following tonight’s contest they play two of the next three against the Dallas Stars to ramp up the divisional play.

Morning skate notes:

According to Brian Munz of TSN 1290 Winnipeg it is an optional skate for the Jets this morning and according to him not skating are Trouba, Hendricks, Matthias, Little, Byfuglien, Enstrom and Myers.  Ken Wiebe of the Winnipeg Sun indicates that Connor Hellebuyck was the first goalie off the ice and appears to be tonight’s starter.

Projected lines, D Pairs & starting goalie (based on last game vs Pens):

Connor-Scheifele-Wheeler
Ehlers-Little-Laine
Tanev-Copp-Matthias
Lemieux-Hendricks-Armia

Morrissey-Trouba
Enstrom-Byfuglien
Kulikov-Myers

Hellebuyck
Mason

Extras:  Dano, Poolman and Chiarot.

Health Update on Adam Lowry:

“Skated yesterday for the first time strong.  He’s having a tough day today.  I don’t mean in terms of his injury.  Today is a hard day for him, he gets pushed real hard today.  If he can get through that and feel strong tomorrow I don’t think we’re very far off a contact sweater.  The nature of his injury has kind of kept him from doing an awful lot of conditioning so a little longer runway here before he gets back in the lineup.”  When asked if Lowry could be back for the game against Montreal coach Maurice indicated “possibly”.

Audio:

Blake Wheeler

Kyle Connor

Coach Maurice:  Facing the Wild.  Hellebuyck in net?  Same skaters as last game?  What has he noticed about Kyle Connor’s game?  On Connor being more involved in the forecheck.  Does he like the way lines 3 & 4 are trending?  Update on Lowry?  On Matthias chipping in a couple of helpers.

All audio courtesy of TSN 1290 Winnipeg.

Also via Brian Munz we get the Wild projected lines, D pairs and starting goalie:

Zucker-Koivu-Granlund
Niederreiter-Staal-Kunin
Foligno-Eriksson Ek-Stewart
Winnik-Cullen-Ennis

Suter-Spurgeon
Brodin-Dumba
Quincey-Reilly

Stalock
Dubnyk