The Jets are back from the All-Star Break today and practiced ahead of puck drop tomorrow in Winnipeg against the Wild. The local NHL club is entering a 40 games in 81 days stretch where they are already far outside of a playoff spot (nine points back of the Flames in second wild card spot) so they don’t have any margin for error.
When we did a roster health check last week only two of the eight players listed were expected to be available to play on the road trip and of those two (Morrissey & DeMelo) it was only Morrissey who played as the team allowed DeMelo another week to heal. Which mean there are gonna be plenty of questions for interim head coach Dave Lowry following practice.
Transaction news:
As expected there was some movement for the club although unexpectedly it began with three players being added to covid protocol as Neal Pionk, Pierre-Luc Dubois and Austin Poganski according to team PR. The Jets also announced the recall of four players (Heinola, Chisholm, Kovacevic and Reichel) from the Moose.
Pre-skate news:
Pair of players made an appearance ahead of skate officially getting underway as both Logan Stanley and Nathan Beaulieu were wearing yellow non-contact jerseys according to Mike McIntyre of the Winnipeg Free Press.
Skate news:
Mike also outlines who is wearing what colour uniform at practice:
white – Scheifele Connor Wheeler Stastny Copp Perfetti
blue – Lowry Harkins Svechnikov Vesalainen Toninato Reichel
red – Morrissey Schmidt Dillon DeMelo Heinola Kovacevic Chisholm
yellow – Stanley Beaulieu
Lines and D pairs:
Courtesy of Ken Wiebe of Sportsnet the configuration of the lines and D pairs are listed below.
Stastny-Scheifele-Wheeler
Connor-Copp-Perfetti
Svechnikov-Lowry-Reichel
Harkins-Toninato-Vesalainen
Morrissey-DeMelo
Dillon-Schmidt
Chisholm-Kovacevic
Heinola rotating in
Player media availability:
Coach media availability:
Up next:
The Jets play this stand alone contest against the Wild tomorrow in Winnipeg. 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.
