While the Jets got back into the win column on Tuesday in St. Paul with an overtime victory over the Wild the team knows that they didn’t play their best game by any stretch of the imagination. Luckily for them they have the best goalie in the NHL and a very capable backup who have been up to par since the season began. The biggest question is the status of Adam Lowry as we wonder if the team will activate him to play in the next few games or if they send him on a conditioning assignment to the Moose.
The opponent this evening are the somewhat surprising Blackhawks who currently sit in the second wild card spot in the West with a 5-3-2 record after 10 games. They defeated the Senators in Chicago 7-1 on Tuesday night with Connor Bedard picking up his first ever hat trick. When it comes to special teams they have a solid penalty kill which is ranked 8th overall while the power play is in the bottom third of the NHL in the 21st spot.
Of course today is about more than a game between these two Central Division rivals. It is the first time that former Hawks captain Jonathan Toews, who led them to three Stanley Cups, will face them since leaving hockey in April of 2023 and returning with Winnipeg this season.
Skate news:
No changes for the Jets this morning.
Jets projected lines & D pairs:
Connor-Scheifele-Vilardi
Namestnikov-Toews-Iafallo
Niederreiter-Barron-Nyquist
Koepke-Ford-Pearson
Morrissey-DeMelo
Stanley-Pionk
Fleury-Schenn
Hellebuyck
Blackhawks projected lines & D pairs:
Greene-Bedard-Burakovsky
Teravainen-Nazar-Bertuzzi
Donato-Dickinson-Mikheyev
Dach-Foligno-Lafferty
Slaggert
Vlasic-Rinzel
Kaiser-Levshunov
Grzelcyk-Murphy
Crevier
Knight
As per Ben Pope of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Players media availability:
Coach media availability:
Topics:
1) How Jonathan Toews is holding up through ten games.
2) Toews faceoff abilities (:39)
3) Did he have any doubts about Toews coming into season? (1:15)
4) What it means to have player buy-in on improving (2:16)
5) What’s latest with injured players? (3:49)
6) Hawks defending well (4:31)
7) Home vs road record to date (5:52)
8) What has Cole Koepke shown him so far? (6:42)
9) What has Logan Stanley done to build trust? (7:27)
Up Next:
Puck drop is at 7 PM CDT. Be sure to head over to illegalcurve.com following the game for a recap of the action. You can join us on our YouTube channel for the Illegal Curve Post-Game Show around 9:40 PM CDT as we discuss and analyze the results of the game.
The date and opponent is now set.
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