Winnipeg Jets Practice Report

The Jets took Sunday off after a big win in St. Louis on Saturday afternoon. They will hit the ice for practice today in Philadelphia as they prepare for the Flyers tomorrow night which will be their final game before the All-Star break.

The expectation is the team could have Josh Morrissey and Dylan DeMelo back for the game tomorrow night.

Worth noting that the taxi squad dissolves after tomorrow’s game which means the Moose are about to get a big bump.  The big club could have a number of players returning by the time they play next after the All-Star break on February 8th when the Jets host the Wild in Winnipeg. Which means Manitoba should be getting quite the bump this weekend. (Chisholm, Gawanke, Reichel, Berdin, Eyssimont & Kovacevic).

Pre-skate news:

According to Mitchell Clinton of JetsTV both Josh Morrissey and Dylan DeMelo are skating today at practice.

Skate news:

Perhaps Dylan DeMelo might not quite be ready to go as we see from the lines and D pairs tweeted out by Mitchell the veteran D man was skating on the fourth pairing with Chisholm.  We shall have to wait and see what interim head coach Dave Lowry says after practice.

Lines & D Pairs:

Copp-Scheifele-Wheeler
Connor-Dubois-Perfetti
Stastny-Lowry-Poganski
Harkins-Toninato-Vesalainen

Dillon-Schmidt
Heinola-Pionk
Morrissey-Kovacevic
Chisholm-DeMelo
Gawanke

Health news:

Interim head coach Dave Lowry was asked about the potential of having Josh Morrissey and Dylan DeMelo potentially return to the lineup tomorrow:

“Oh there’s potential that they are going to play. I will say one out of the two will for sure and that will be Josh. We weren’t going to bring him in not to play.”

Regarding DeMelo he added this:

“Oh he’s close but the big thing with Melo is that we play one game and have a week off…we’ll talk to him, see how he felt today, and then we’ll just kinda make a decision whether it’s smart to throw him in or give him another seven days.”

Last up was a question about Nikolaj Ehlers who is on LTIR and the soonest he could return would be February 14th:

“Nik’s good. He’s good but he’s nowhere near close to playing.”

Player media availability:

Coach media availability:

Topics:

1) Thoughts on Morrissey and DeMelo and if they could play tomorrow.
2) Feel like it was bad timing for Josh Morrissey given the changes to testing? (:38)
3) How close is Dylan DeMelo? (1:01)
4) Update on Nikolaj Ehlers? (1:22)
5) The differences stylistically between the Blues and Flyers (1:42)
6) Making sure team is dialed in for Philly (2:15)
7) How similar were the Pittsburgh and St. Louis games from them? (2:46)
8) Pairing Josh Morrissey with Johnny Kovacevic (3:27)

Up next:

The Jets conclude this short two-game road trip tomorrow against the Flyers in Philadelphia.  You can start your day with the Morning Papers which go live on illegalcurve.com at 7 AM, stick with us throughout the day for updates and then join the conversation on the Illegal Curve Post-Game Show.