It was a short answer from the Jets bench boss on Sunday following practice, with two straight wins under his team’s belt, when he was asked how long he might run with the three goalie system “When our goaltending looks like it has…indefinitely.”
Coach Maurice had said earlier in the scrum when talking about having three goalies in the fold that it is, in the normal course “Difficult to keep three goaltenders game ready but we have something a little unusual here because we just lacked so much practice time here we haven’t had the opportunity to take, experience wise, two young guys and work em. So right now, its a real benefit to us. So we can take a goaltender out of main practice, Connor did that this morning (Sunday). He had 45 minutes of really specific technical work, something that is difficult to do because we need goalies to practice, when you have two its hard to do that. So we’ve been able to take a guy out of a normal practice rotation and get him back to feeling good, feeling sharp, so it works really well for us right now.”
The Jets chose to run Ondrej Pavelec in his fourth consecutive games and prior to puck drop against the Sharks on Tuesday coach Maurice was asked how the rest was impacting Connor Hellebuyck’s mindset. “I think its been good for him. I really believe that. Its been good for him. He’s had a chance to spend some time really working on the technical parts of his game. Get some of the pressure off of him, get him right back to playing goal, just stopping pucks. I think its been a really nice break for him mentally.”
In his first media availability after Pavelec’s recall from the Moose, coach Maurice was asked about how long they may run with three goalies “we’re not doing this as a long term plan…I don’t think that’s something that you’re going to see long in our future, but nothing is set in stone”.
After winning his first two starts (helped by 11 Winnipeg goals) the team has dropped back to back games this week. The Jets will now head to Chicago before they have a few days off for the All-Star break. We shall see if the bench boss has changed his tune and if he is ready to go back to a rested and reset Connor Hellebuyck in the near term.
