Game 73: Winnipeg Jets vs Vegas Golden Knights pre-game report

The Jets kicked off their five games at home on Tuesday night with a 4-3 OT loss to the Oilers which saw them play a good 1st, a terrible 2nd, comeback in the 3rd and fall short in OT. The team chose to rest on Wednesday so no indication as to what, if any, changes they will make for tonight’s contest against the Golden Knights although it seems reasonable they’ll get some of the guys who sat (Dylan Samberg, David Gustafsson, Collin Miller, etc) in after sitting and potentially get Laurent Brossoit back between the pipes. But we will have to wait for morning skate to find out about that.

Hard to believe that last year it was Winnipeg who was chasing for a spot in the Western Conference playoffs while Vegas was cruising on their way to top spot in the entire conference before they ran all the way to winning the Stanley Cup. One year later the Jets are battling with the Avs and Stars for top spot in the Central while the Golden Knights are currently in the second wild card position.

It’s been an unusual year for the defending champs who are dealing with big time injuries (captain Mark Stone and acquired at the deadline Tomas Hertl). They haven’t been a great road team going just 16-14-6 this season which bodes well for a Jets team that are 23-9-3 in Winnipeg. The Jets have scored 11 fewer goals than their opponent this evening but they’ve also given up 37 less goals this season.

Morning Skate:

Cole Perfetti, Rasmus Kupari and Gabriel Vilardi in red jerseys presumably as non-players this evening.

Connor Hellebuyck in the starter’s net.

Jets projected lines & D pairs:

Connor-Scheifele-Iafallo
Ehlers-Monahan-Toffoli
Niederreiter-Lowry-Appleton
Barron-Gustafsson-Namestnikov

Morrissey-DeMelo
Dillon-Pionk
Stanley-Samberg

Hellebuyck
Brossoit

Player interviews:

Coach interview:

Topics:

1) Lineup changes.
2) Untimely line changes (:10)
3) Faceoffs on the PK (2:05)
4) Line changes vs trying to create more offence (2:54)
5) How does Vegas compare to last year’s team? (3:40)
6) Importance of where they finish vs how they are playing? (4:14)
7) So they aren’t focusing on who they face? (5:15)
8) Pairing of Samberg/Stanley (5:33)
9) Latest on Gabriel Vilardi? (6:00)
10) What did he see from Cole Perfetti when he was in lineup? (6:30)
11) Getting bigger guys into the lineup to match Vegas (7:54)
12) How do they help them overcome mental errors? (8:18)

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. Reminder to join us on the Illegal Curve Post-Game Show following the final buzzer between the Jets and Golden Knights.