Game 3 of the pre-season: Jets vs Canadiens pre-game report

The Jets are 1-1-0 in their pre-season exhibition games and will look to build on that when they take a relatively young team to Montreal to take on the Habs this evening.

Morning skate:

No skate was held.

Lineup news:

As per Ken Wiebe of Sportsnet we glean a bit of info about the lineup for tonight as Jets head coach Rick Bowness has indicated

“team will bring 13 forwards to Montreal and there is one guy who is going to be a game-time decision. The plan is to have David Rittich play 40 mins, Arvid Holm for the final period.”

Wieber also firms up the D pairs.

Jets projected lines & D pairs:

These players all skated together on Wednesday with the exception of (Maenalanen, Torgersson, Lambert and Samberg) so you can add these four players into the mix.

Reichel-Dubois-Gagner
Harkins-Gustafsson-Appleton
Polei-Stenlund-Lambert
Malott-Maier-Torgersson

Samberg-Schmidt
Stanley-Heinola
Capobianco-Kovacevic

Rittich
Holm

Canadiens projected lines and D pairs:

As per Arpon Basu of The Athletic here are how the Habs will look tonight.

Dadonov-Dvorak-Gallagher
Caufield-Dach-Heineman
Simoneau-Kidney-Martel
Belzile-Gignac-Roy

Guhle-Savard
Xhekaj-Wideman
Norlinder-Trudeau

Allen
Primeau

Players media availability:

To follow.

Coach media availability:

Topics:

1) D pairings for tonight’s game.
2) Plan for goalies? (:33)
3) Neal Pionk potential to provide offence from backend (:51)
4) Pionk giving himself a tough self evaluation (1:32)
5) How much stock does he put in chemistry? (2:27)
6) Where will he use Saku Maenalanen? (2:46)
7) Health updates? (3:11)
8) What does he need to see from Brad Lambert? (3:39)

Up Next:

Puck drop is at 6:00 pm CDT.  Be sure to head over to illegalcurve.com following the game for a recap of the action which includes post-game interviews from Jets players as well as from head coach Rick Bowness.