The Jets face the Wild tonight for their first pre-season game of the training camp season. The part of tonight’s game that is of interest is the line combinations and as of now we will finally see what Paul Maurice wants to look at.
At least we can begin to speculate on what he is looking at.
Stafford Scheifele Wheeler Perreault Burmistrov Ehlers Lemieux Copp Armia Thorburn Petan Raffl
Enstrom Byfuglien Stuart Trouba Morrissey Kitchton
Pavelec
The quick takeaway from this line up is Maurice wants so see his younger, less-known players in a line up that resembles what might be seen in the regular season. While it seems odd to put Petan, a skilled playmaking centre on a line with Thorburn, he is playing with Raffl who is a big, skilled winger that has come over from the Swiss league and is the brother of Michael Raffl from the Flyers.
Ehlers, Lemieux, Copp, Armia Morrissey, Kichton, Petan and Raffl are all getting the first pro look tonight, and to a lesser extent Burmistrov too as he makes his return to the NHL.
It’s a balanced roster of verteran presence with a youthful injection of prospects which according to all indication and analysis this past summer is what Jets fans can expect to see but not quite to this degree. The above-mentioned players are fighting for spots, with established vets and among themselves.
As it’s been said in this space before it will be hard for Morrissey to crack the roster and probably less likely for Kichton but viewing their games is important. Maurice and Chevy need to know who is ready to be called up when injuries inevitably hit the team and it always seems to start with defence.
The line that is the most intriguing among the forwards is the Perreault Burmistrov Ehlers line as it represents what could be a very realistic line come the regular season, but that mostly depends on the play of Ehlers. Perreault and Burmistrov are ‘possession darlings’ and drive the play through their puck control and handling. Perreault is a tenacious fore-checker and Burmistrov, if Jets fans recall, was the same on the PK when he was paired with Kane. Both of these players have more than a north-south game could be the magic elixr to feed the future ‘scoring-winger’ Ehlers.
As with former Jet, Evander Kane, Burmistrov could play a pivotal role with setting up and doing the so-called ‘spade work’ before Ehlers gets the reward. That reward is scoring opportunities and shots and Ehlers has to match the tenacity of his line mates if he expects opportunities to appear.
The other line that should be of interest is Lemieux-Copp-Armia. Brendan Lemieux has come to camp and raised some eye-brows from fans who have seen him thus far. He comes with a reputation of hard play and having former NHLer Claude Lemieux as a father probably only exaggerates what people see and expect. But what about Armia?
He played a bit with the IceCaps last season but had little impact with 2 goals and 8 assists in 21 games. In fairness to the player, no one had much impact on the Ice Caps last year aside from Conner Hellebyuck. Andrew Copp is another player to watch and seemingly the heir apparent to the 4th line centre position held by former Jet stalwart Jim Slater. Is it likely that this trio stays as a line? Probably not this season but it’s not too far-fetched to think that Maurice sees something that would make him think about the future. As mentioned above this is about seeing players in the bigger setting and how they play and knowing where these three sit is going to be important.
There is less intrigue in the defence pairings as it’s a pretty much WSYWYG situation, what you see is what you get. Icing two veteran pairs and letting Morrissey and Kichton go together gives Maurice the comparison view of who is a better call-up if necessary, but that is assuming neither starts in Winnipeg which I think is a safe assumption.
While Stafford Scheifele and Wheeler take top line duties tonight it will be the lines below who are the ones to watch as the Jets host the Wild to open their NHL pre-season schedule.