Little won’t play as Jets face Panthers

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This article was published 20/02/2016 (3517 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SUNRISE, Fla. — Centre Bryan Little will miss tonight’s game for the Winnipeg Jets at BB&T Center against the Florida Panthers.

Little was knocked out of Thursday’s game in Tampa by a predatory hit to the head from Lightning defenceman Anton Stralman.

“We’ll list him as day-to-day,” Jets coach Paul Maurice announced after the team’s game-day skate. “If we were at home I’d be a little more optimistic for the next game. But he’s got a four-hour flight to deal with so we’ll see how he comes out of that.

“We’ll just leave him at day-to-day but he won’t play tonight.”

The Jets finish a four-game road trip tonight and fly home right after the game to play one home game, Tuesday against Dallas.

Tonight is the seventh game in a stretch of 11 in a row that requires the Jets to travel.

Winnipeg enters play tonight 10 points off the playoff line in the Western Conference standings.

The Panthers lead the NHL’s Atlantic Division with 73 points.

To account for Little’s absence tonight, Mathieu Perreault will move to centre between Blake Wheeler and Nikolaj Ehlers.

“It stems directly from his last stint at centre in January when we lost all our centremen for a bit,” Maurice said. “He came in and played really well there.”

On the back end, Paul Postma will play his second straight game on the Jets defence, and his fourth game of the season.

“I liked Adam Pardy’s game before (on Tuesday) as well,” the coach said. “I liked Paul’s game and I also liked the structure of our defence so I’m going to give him… I’m going to keep these guys kind of coming in and out of the lineup but I don’t want to rotate them every game. I’ve got to try to build some confidence there in the back end with these guys but I like the way the rest of our defence sorted out with Paul in the lineup and I liked his game.”

The Jets will go with Michael Hutchinson in goal tonight, while the Panthers will come back to veteran Roberto Luongo, who hasn’t played in a week.

The Jets mustered up some passion and anger in their game in Tampa on Thursday and despite losing 6-5 in a shootout, pulled plenty of positives from the outing.

“I think like a lot of things we did in that game, the compete level we had but that doesn’t mean anything if we don’t bring it again tonight,” Jets captain Andrew Ladd, who had two goals on Thursday, said this morning. “That’s the step in the right direction, bringing it back tonight and playing at that same level.”

Wheeler said today the Jets have no choice in how they must play tonight.

“We unfortunately don’t have the luxury of being able to take our foot off the gas and be good,” Wheeler said. “We have two speeds and at one speed, we’re a pretty tough team to play against and at one, we’re not. That’s what it is right there, we need to have that to give ourselves a fighting chance to win on any given night.

“You see it from the Carolina game to the Tampa game, it’s two different hockey teams, so that in itself should motivate us to get us going. Whatever happens in the past, it’s unfortunate those things happen but you’ve just got to go with it and deal with it and go on.”

Veteran winger Chris Thorburn said the standings alone — the Jets are last in the Central and have 25 games to play — should make his team’s level of intensity automatic.

“That should give us motivation to come out with good efforts, not just tonight but every night down the stretch here,” Thorburn said. “As an older guy I find it pretty easy to get prepared and understand how important these games are. And ending a road trip on a good note is something we want to do. There should be enough motivation there, not come out artificially or faking the intensity, but coming out with the intensity you need to win hockey games.”

This week has helped with some focus, Thorburn said, but it’s not the entire basis for intensity.

“We know what’s in the locker room,” he said. “It’s a matter of consistency and putting it out consistently come game time. The game in Tampa, even though we lost, we took a lot of good things from that.

“That’s the freshest thing in our minds in how we played and how we battled back. We just have to carry those good things into the game tonight and down the stretch.”

Maurice also said this morning that if you think Thursday’s events are the only factor in the Jets’ intensity tonight, you’d be wrong.

“This is a conversation that didn’t start a couple of days ago,” Maurice said. “It’s been a theme and it’s our challenge. Getting to the level that we need to play at to have success to compete sometimes is a learning process. It’s not an easy thing to do.

“And we’re going through that process right now. So that’s our challenge, night after night in the NHL. Our team has to compete at an exceptionally high level. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a lesson that we have to make ours. We have to make it who we are.

“So we’ve got another great opportunity to do it here tonight.”

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca