Winnipeg Jets Practice Report

Second straight day of practice in Winnipeg as the Jets continue to prepare to face a Habs team which have fallen from 2nd to 4th in the All-Canadian division.  Montreal lost to Ottawa last night in overtime and this morning head coach Claude Julien and associate coach Kirk Muller were relieved of their coaching duties.

Skate news:

According to Ken Wiebe of Sportsnet here are the players on the ice for practice:

8 D (Morrissey, DeMelo, Pionk, Forbort, Beaulieu, Stanley, Niku, Nogier)
14 F (Dubois, Scheifele, Wheeler, Connor, Stastny, Ehlers, Copp, Lowry, Appleton, Perreault, Thompson, Lewis, Harkins, Vesalainen) – not Gustafsson.

Ken added that Tucker Poolman is not skating.  Line rushes, D pairs and special teams info courtesy of Ken as well.

Line rushes and D pairs:

Dubois-Scheifele-Wheeler
Connor-Stastny-Ehlers
Copp-Lowry-Appleton
Perreault-Thompson-Lewis
Harkins-Vesalainen are extra Fs

Beaulieu-Morrissey
Forbort-Pionk
Niku-DeMelo
Stanley-Nogier

Power Play units:

PP1: Scheifele-Morrissey-Connor-Wheeler-Stastny.

PP2: Ehlers-Pionk-Dubois-Perreault-Copp (Lowry swapped in for 2nd run).

Player availability:

Coach availability:

Topics:

1. Health update and his roster.
2. Playing against a team after a coaching change.
3. Benefit to moving Pierre-Luc Dubois to the wing.
4. How well does he know Claude Julien and expectation he can bounce back?
5. Is there a reason for his reluctance to pair Morrissey and DeMelo?
6. Drivers on his lines.
7. Benefit of this stretch before they get going with a tight schedule.

Up next:

The Jets will face a Habs team tomorrow night who fired their head coach this morning so it should make for an interesting contest. Be sure to keep it locked to illegalcurve.com for the AM Papers which go live at 7 AM CT.