Injuries continue to plague Jets, but Burmistrov may be cleared to play

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This article was published 20/01/2016 (3550 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The last thing the Winnipeg Jets needed was for injury news to get worse so there was concern today with a couple more caution flags.

Jets forward Alexander Burmistrov didn’t practise with the team today. No reason was given but head coach Paul Mauice said it might not be bad news.

“He’ll take the morning skate tomorrow and we have an expectation that he’ll play,” Maurice said, referring to Thursday’s home game versus the Nashville Predators.

And during today’s hour-long practice at the MTS Centre, centre Andrew Copp crashed into the boards during a line rush and had to be helped off. He did return, however, about 10 minutes later and completed practice.

The Jets have also been without centres Mark Scheifele and Adam Lowry, winger Drew Stafford and goalie Ondrej Pavelec.

None of those four have a return scheduled.

“Pav skated now and he’ll just continue on that,” Maurice said. “If he’s strong on that, we’ll just continue to augment his time until he’s back out on the ice taking full shots with the team.

“Staff and Scheif skated this morning and felt better than they did yesterday and Lowry didn’t skate. None of them are playing tomorrow.”

Pavelec has been out two months now and his return is not imminent.

“You just keep it to stages,” Maurice said. “You just keep adding five minutes and increasing the workload. And by the time he’s fully cleared from the staff, then he’s got to get back into game crap and that’s not a one-day event for a goalie.

“Every day he comes in and there certainly hasn’t been a setback. There hasn’t been a day where he’s been overly sore or (more) sore than we thought he would be. We’ll just keep adding to it.”

Maurice’s goaltending situation has been held up with sturdiness from rookie Connor Hellebuyck but the coach was asked if he’s at all impatient with Pavelec’s injury.

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“No. I’m always impatient for every injury,” he said. “You’d like a guy to heal faster but the downside to ever playing a guy before he’s ready is just so big, especially somebody like this. And then there’s the guy, and you’ve seen it with Carey Price. You go back and everybody fully believes the guy’s 100 per cent ready and he may well be and then the injury that can happen at any point in the year happens again and then you’re wondering, ‘Was one more day all I needed to wait?’ So we’re patient with him.”

The Jets enter Thursday’s game with Nashville four points off the Western Conference playoff line. Colorado has 49, the Jets have 45. Nashville, in between with 48, was here just last Thursday, a 5-4 Jets win in overtime.

“You feel like you can get out there and beat these guys because you’ve done it before,” said Jets centre Mathieu Perreault. “It’ll take a lot of work by us to prepare and get into the right mindset. It’s a must-win so we’ll call come with that mindset and we’ll be fine.”

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca