Game 28: Winnipeg Jets vs Chicago Blackhawks pre-game report

The Jets got back on track (for the most part) in their overtime win over the Sabres on Thursday night as they continue to live out of a suitcase for well over three weeks during this stretch which has seen them play 11 out of 13 games on the road which concludes this evening in Chicago. With Winnipeg sliding it’s allowed other teams to gain ground and they now find themselves two points back of Minnesota, one back of Vegas and tied with Washington and New Jersey which didn’t seem possible all that long ago. Of course their focus right now is getting back to playing the right way with more speed and structure which as mentioned above they were able to do for stretches in their last contest. We’ve seen this team play their game despite opponent rather than playing down to their opponents level which will be their big test when they face the last place team in the Central Division.

They face a Chicago team that fired head coach Luke Richardson on Thursday and promoted AHL head coach of Rockford Anders Sorensen as the interim for the remainder of the season. The Hawks are sitting 8th in the Central with an 8-16-2 record. They don’t score very much and they give up a lot of goals which explains why they are where they are in the standings. The United Center is not the Madhouse on Madison it once way. One area of positivity is special teams where they have the 11th ranked PP in the NHL and 8th ranked PK.

Skate news:

No morning skate. We know from yesterday’s practice that the lines and D pairs stayed the same. Seems likely they’ll use Connor Hellebuyck in net today and Eric Comrie tomorrow.

Jets projected lines & D pairs:

Connor-Scheifele-Vilardi
Namestnikov-Lambert-Perfetti
Niederreiter-Lowry-Appleton
Barron-Kupari-Iafallo
Gustafsson

Morrissey-Pionk
Fleury-DeMelo
Stanley-Heinola

Hellebuyck
Comrie

Blackhawks projected lines & D pairs:

Kurashev-Bedard-Teravainen
Hall-Donato-Bertuzzi
Foligno-Dickinson-Mikheyev
Maroon-Reichel-Smith

Vlasic-Murphy
Allan-Martinez
Brodie/Crevier/Kaiser

Mrazek

As per Ben Pope who covers the Hawks for the Chicago Sun Post this was how they ran in their first skate with their new coach.

Up Next:

Puck drop is at 3 PM CST.  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 5:40 PM CST as we discuss and analyze the results of the game.