Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman released their 31 Thoughts Podcast on Thursday which contained some Winnipeg Jets talk.
Marek began the segment asking Friedman if it should have been better for Winnipeg if not for all the injuries they dealt with during the season.
Friedman answered “I think there’s a lot of that. I think that team played really hard, really hard. They got beaten up at the end. I think there were several things that happened to them that were really great this year. Hellebuyck went to another level. The word on him was that you could frustrate him and make him lose his mind. He was much better at that this year and I think long term that’s a great thing for Winnipeg. I think they found a guy who was much better than a lot of us realized in Pionk. That was a big success for them this year. I thought Laine took another step and I thought Ehlers, especially in the playoffs even though they lost, took another step. They went through a lot of crap this year. It was a really hard year. I would think this year is going to make them better in the long run.”
Photo Credit: Alex James
Marek then asked if Friedman sees Cheveldayoff making any moves?
Friedman feels they will. “Ya I do. I think they’ll look on D. But I like his group. The one thing you got to wonder about is in a year, where you going with Laine. You can’t really bridge him again.”
Marek interjects stating that he thought it was Laine’s decision to bridge.
Friedman continues “It was. It was but you’re getting to the point where you don’t want to do that again. He’s gonna have arb rights, his arb number is gonna be huge, he’s gonna be two years from unrestricted free agency. Is that what you want to do?”
Marek then switched gears to the play of Adam Lowry in the playoffs. He felt that Lowry was fantastic in the Jets and Flames series.
Photo Credit: Colby Spence
Friedman added this about Lowry after complimenting the play of Andrew Copp. “Lowry’s a UFA in a year. But Lowry’s the kind of guy that, big centre, gonna be a lot of interest.”
If you’d like to give it a listen the Jets talk starts at 1:23:30 and runs to 1:25:55. You can hear it here.
