Another morning spent at the hockey for all centre where both the Moose and Jets were preparing for the ultra rare double home gameday with Winnipeg playing host to Ottawa at Canada Life while Manitoba is visiting the University of Manitoba at Wayne Fleming Arena.
The Moose got going earlier with the playing group starting things off followed by the non-playing group. The playing group that will take on the Bisons has three Jets draft picks including Chaz Lucius, Nikita Chibrikov and Dmitry Kuzmin.
The most notable thing from morning skate was that 2022 2nd rounder Elias Salomonsson was not skating with either of the two squads. We would later learn that he was heading back to Sweden as the Jets had assigned him to Skelleftea. At that time they also assigned Henri Nikkanen to the Moose after he healed up from his thumb injury which reduced their training camp roster to 28 players.
Heading across the arena to the Jets morning skate the only thing that was “amiss” was that Nikolaj Ehlers wasn’t skating with the playing group. On Wednesday bench boss Rick Bowness had indicated that they would wait to see how Ehlers was this morning.
Following a quick morning skate he confirmed that Ehlers wouldn’t play tonight against the Senators as they don’t want to risk any setbacks to him and risk him not being able to play to start the regular season on October 11th.
There was plenty of Ville Heinola talk in today’s media availability as the 2019 1st rounder keeps showing he belongs with the NHL club including this comment from Rick Bowness when asked by Scott Billeck of the Winnipeg Sun whether Heinola has “has won a spot on this roster”.
Bowness said in part “He’s done everything he can to make this hockey club….”.
Once the clock struck 1 PM it was confirmed that Jeffrey Viel had cleared waivers and could be assigned to the Moose.
When the clock struck 7 PM CDT the puck dropped at Canada Life between the Jets and Senators and much like what happened less than one week ago in Ottawa the biggest news story was the injury to a defenceman. Unlike that one that knocked Elias Salomonsson out for a few days this one to Ville Heinola sounds like it will be a long-term injury according to head coach Rick Bowness who as per Sean Reynolds of Sportsnet this is what the Jets bench boss had to say after the game about Heinola’s status:
“It’s not good. It’s not going to be a short term injury.”
With that pall hanging over the game the visitors built a 1-0 lead after 20 minutes into a 2-0 lead after 40 minutes and ended the game with a 3-0 win after 60 minutes.
The Jets end the pre-season with a 2-3-1 record.
Of course that matters not given the news about Ville Heinola. We shall have to wait for further testing to know how long the Jets expect him to be out of the lineup.
