Winnipeg Jets Practice Report

The Jets are celebrating the first day of the 2019-20 NHL regular season with a practice at Bell MTS Place before they take off for NYC.  According to Murat Ates of The Athletic Winnipeg here are the Jets lines, D pairs as well as the composition of the two power play units.

Lines & D Pairs:

Ehlers-Scheifele-Wheeler
Connor-Copp-Laine
Perreault-Lowry-Bourque
Appleton-Letestu-Roslovic
Gustafsson

Morrissey-Kulikov
Heinola-Pionk
Bitetto-Poolman

Niku is skating at Moose practice
Dahlstrom is in transit from Prague

Power Play Units:

1. Wheeler, Scheifele, Connor, Laine, Morrissey
2. Ehlers, Roslovic, Perreault, Heinola, Pionk

Audio:

Neal Pionk

Connor Hellebuyck

Nikolaj Ehlers

Coach Maurice scrum topics:  Team toughness and it being a more collective effort.  On the lack of reaction to the Little hit.  On whether the Jets can be physical enough.  Does he expect the lines/D pairs to be the same tomorrow as they were today?  Status of Niku.  How does he feel they have dealt with the adversity?  Does he feel that his team is being overlooked?  What makes Pionk the right guy to pair with Heinola?  Are there still evaluations being done on the road trip?  Is there something that makes Nikolaj Ehlers the right fit for the top line?

All audio courtesy of TSN 1290 Winnipeg.

Niku Update:

Sami Niku was with the Moose this morning to take part in their practice as the team gets set to head out on the road to Texas to play a pair of games to start their season.  Coach Maurice confirmed what was suspected by the assigning of Niku to the AHL, saying that it was to bring up Niku’s conditioning after the car accident and only playing in one pre-season game and being on the ice with the Jets twice during training camp.  Maurice wouldn’t confirm when Niku would be recalled but it certainly didn’t appear that it would be during this initial road trip for Winnipeg.

Up Next:

The Jets kick off the first road trip of the regular season with the first game of the season against the Rangers on Thursday starting at 6 pm CT. Be sure to keep it locked to illegalcurve.com for the AM Papers which go live at 7 AM followed by our pre-game report at 9:30 AM.