Game 49: Winnipeg Jets vs Colorado Avalanche pre-game report

The Jets cancelled practice in Denver on Tuesday following a very disappointing outing in Utah on Monday. With the team staying off the ice we didn’t get any clarity on captain Adam Lowry who left the game after the 1st period and did not return (potentially because of this play when he hit the boards). Now the team didn’t make a recall from the Moose but they had an extra forward in Dominic Toninato for their last game and head coach Scott Arniel on Monday said Mason Appleton would be considered a game-time decision for the game this evening which would leave them with an extra skater if 22 is good to go and 17 is not. We will have to wait for “morning” skate from Ball Arena to get insight.

The opponent for the Jets this evening are an Avs team which are none too pleased with the 3-1 loss they suffered to the Wild on Monday. They’ve hit a bit of a rough patch going 5-4-1 in their last ten games. When they last faced Winnipeg ten days ago this same Colorado team were a red-hot 8-1-1 in their last ten games. Goalie Mackenize Blackwood who was 8-1-1 to start his career with the Avs lost to the Jets back on the 11th of January and has since gone 1-3-0 (including the 3-0 loss to Winnipeg). His save % is now .928 (it was .940) and his GAA is 1.97 (it was 1.68). Of course those are still good numbers just not quite as scorching as they were the last time these two teams met.

Skate news:

Not a big surprise that Jets captain Adam Lowry wasn’t skating today as per Murat Ates of The Athletic Winnipeg. He’s got the lines and D pairs as below. Interesting configurations. On the D side of things Mike McIntyre of the Winnipeg Free Press is reporting that Ville Heinola and Colin Miller stayed out for extra work which means Haydn Fleury and Logan Stanley would be the third pair. This would be Fleury’s first game in almost a month (December 23rd vs Leafs).

Winnipeg projected lines & D pairs:

Connor-Scheifele-Iafallo
Ehlers-Namestnikov-Vilardi
Niederreiter-Kupari-Perfetti
Barron-Gustafsson-Appleton
Toninato

Morrissey-DeMelo
Samberg-Pionk
Fleury-Stanley

Hellebuyck
Comrie

Avalanche projected lines & D pairs:

Colton – MacKinnon – Rantanen
Drouin – Mittelstadt – Lehkonen
Kiviranta – Kelly – O’Connor
Innala – Parssinen – Ivan

Toews – Makar
Girard – Manson
Middleton – Malinski

Blackwood
Wedgewood

Health news:

With the captain not skating the question was asked of Scott Arniel about his status and as per Murat Ates the news is not good. He said Lowry is out “week to week” with an upper-body injury.

Up Next:

Puck drop is at 8:30 PM CST. Be sure to head over to illegalcurve.com following the game for a recap of the action. Join us live at Boston Pizza on Taylor Avenue for an IC Watch Party which gets underway when the game starts. If you can’t join us in person you can join us on our YouTube channel for the Illegal Curve Post-Game Show around 11:10 PM CST as we discuss and analyze the results of the game.