With Brenden Dillon and Nate Schmidt moving on from Winnipeg this season it was finally supposed to open up an opportunity for a pair of Jets drafted defencemen in Ville Heinola (2019 1st) and Logan Stanley (2016 1st).
Photo Credit: Colby Spence (Illegal Curve)
Unfortunately for the pair it was not meant to be as Heinola came down with an infection in the same ankle that cost him months at the start of the 2023-24 season and which would again require surgery while Stanley felt a tweak while warming up that ended up being a meniscus issue which also required surgery.
Head coach Scott Arniel on September 26th said Heinola was out a “minimum four weeks” and then on September 27th he announced that Stanley would be out of the lineup for at least four weeks. He was asked about that today after practice, whether timelines have changed and he indicated:
“They’re both walking better. I’d say Stan’s probably ahead of Ville but we’ll see. They both have to get re-examined here in a couple of weeks. At the end of the day they’re both moving closer, the good thing, like I said earlier on, is it happened in training camp so they have this little bit of leeway up until obviously the season starts Wednesday. But given them some time to get better. Certainly not by the end of the month expect anybody in. We’ll see. Hopefully maybe they do recover a little quicker but at the end of the day that’s probably the timeline that we’re at now.”
As the Jets need to be roster compliant they have placed both players on IR to start the 2024-25 campaign.
