The battle for a spot on a packed Winnipeg Jets blueline

The Jets backlog on the backend has been in place for awhile now since the team acquired Brenden Dillon from the Washington Capitals and Nate Schmidt from the Vancouver Canucks in the summer of 2021.

It has meant that some of their prospects have continued to marinate in the AHL with the Manitoba Moose. And last year it also cost them a player they had drafted and developed as Johnny Kovacevic (2017 3rd) was claimed by the Habs off waivers during training camp. The Grimsby, Ontario product went on to play 66 games for Montreal.

The top-six for the Jets seems to be established as follows:

Josh Morrissey – Dylan DeMelo
Brenden Dillon – Neal Pionk
Dylan Samberg – Nate Schmidt.

Last year they had Logan Stanley and Kyle Capobianco in the seven and eight spots.

This training camp these eight players are back and you’ve got Ville Heinola and Declan Chisholm in the mix who are both gunning for spots on the big club after putting in another solid season in the AHL. Heinola could be a victim of his waiver status as he still has one more year of being waiver exempt but Chisholm, who is coming off an AHL All-Star season, is no longer waiver exempt and like Kovacevic, could be claimed off waivers by a team willing to give him a shot in the NHL.

Jets head coach Rick Bowness was asked if he was losing any sleep trying to figure out what the blueline might look like. He indicated:

“Players will eventually cut themselves based on how they play. We’re going to give Ville. We’re going to give Chis. We’re going to give those guys every opportunity to show what they can do. If they play great like we’re hoping they will then we’re going to have to make some tough decisions at the end of camp. But I’d rather have the tough decisions then ‘Oh God these guys are playing themselves right out of here’. We weren’t good enough last year. We didn’t win the Stanley Cup. So we want anyone who can show that they’re going to make us a better team, we want to see that in training camp. And if they can make us a better team and we feel really good about where they are then that’s where we’re gonna be and we’ll deal with that problem at the time.”

Another dark horse candidate who could add a wrench into the plans is right-shot defenceman Elias Salomonsson (2022 2nd) who is expected to return to Skelleftea. But he did tell us last week that his goal was “to make a good camp here and try to take a spot. If not, go home and come back stronger.”