Game 45: Jets vs Oilers pre-game report

The Jets finished up a very successful five-game road trip which saw them go 4-1-0 and they were originally scheduled to play six at home which has since been amended to five with one of their games next week against the Leafs punted to mid May.

Morning skate:

As per Ken Wiebe of Sportsnet it looks like Blake Wheeler isn’t ready to go as he wasn’t part of line rushes.  Also looks like Logan Stanley back in and Ville Heinola is out.

Jets projected lines & D pairs:

Connor-Scheifele-Dubois
Copp-Stastny-Ehlers
Perreault-Lowry-Appleton
Harkins-Thompson-Lewis

Morrissey-Poolman
Forbort-Pionk
Stanley-DeMelo
Heinola-Benn

Hellebuyck
Brossoit

Players media availability:

Coach media availability:

Topics:

1. Adam Lowry’s five-year extension.
2. Collective belief of his team and how has it grown.
3. Sense of pride for players wanting to stay and win in Winnipeg.
4. Line assignments and Adam Lowry.
5. Adam Lowry being such a grounded person.
6. Leadership shown by team without Blake Wheeler in the lineup.
7. Getting Lowry from now into his early 30s.
8. Update on Blake Wheeler.
9. Plan for the platoon on the back end.

Health update:

With Blake Wheeler skating Jets bench boss Paul Maurice was asked for an update on his captain. He indicated that

“Blake’s been cleared. He’s feeling great. He’s passed his tests. He, I guess, potentially could have been available for tonight. It didn’t make much sense for me to do that, especially with the change that we’ve just had in our schedule. We can get two more days of working out and then he can get two full practices in with the team. We’re 100% sure as far as we can be with where we are medically to diagnose these things but he feels great, says he is 100%, doctors say he’s good to go but we’re not going to put him in tonight until we can get him in a couple of practices and then we won’t think about it again.”

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 Paul Maurice.  You can also join us afterwards for our post-game show here (be sure to smash that like/subscribe button).