Jets prospects Barlow, Yager heading back to junior teams

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This article was published 29/09/2024 (373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Slowly but surely, the Winnipeg Jets starting lineup is starting to take shape.

The latest round of cuts came Sunday morning, with five more players sent packing from training camp. Forwards Brayden Yager and Colby Barlow are headed back to their respective junior teams, while forwards Parker Ford and Daniel Torgersson and goaltender Domenic DiVincentiis will report to the Manitoba Moose.

“For me with Colby, this was his first camp. He missed out all of last year with getting sick in training camp and not getting a chance to play in exhibition games,” Jets coach Scott Arniel said of Barlow, the 18th-overall pick from 2023 who played in a pair of preseason games last week.

“Asking him what he thought, he felt better in the second game compared to the first, but just the pace of the game. How little he had the puck and just all the stuff, whether it’s him playing the system or just trying to get to spots offensively to get his looks. He recognized that there’s a whole level, a different pace.”

Barlow, 19, is expected to compete for a spot on Canada’s World Junior team. His Ontario Hockey League rights currently belong to Owen Sound, but there are rumours swirling that he could be traded to another team.

“The hard part when you go back is that you don’t take your foot off the pedal and kind of relax. He needs to make sure that every day is a learning day for him,” said Arniel.

“Whether that’s in the weight room or on the ice. That you don’t get caught out there with those minute (shifts), 20, 30 seconds at half-speed, Try to keep that mentality of 45, 50 second shifts going as hard as you can. Try to make sure that he’s gaining as much as he can through this learning experience.”

As for Yager, the 14th-overall pick from 2023 certainly opened some eyes in his first camp with Winnipeg including scoring a goal in Friday’s 8-5 preseason loss to the Minnesota Wild. The 19-year-old, obtained by the Jets in the Rutger McGroarty trade, will go back to the Moose Jaw Warriors of the WHL for one more year.

“Great skill-set, great shot. Good on faceoffs. He’s a heady kid, always asking questions of myself and the other coaches about playing without the puck,” said Arniel.

“I think the best thing for him, last year he played two exhibition games (in Pittsburgh), but he got to sit and learn from Sidney Crosby. And here he got to sit and learn from Scheif (Mark Scheifele).”

These moves leave Winnipeg with 36 players left in camp — 19 forwards, 13 defencemen and four goaltenders. That includes injured blue-liners Logan Stanley and Ville Heinola. The team must get down to a maximum of 23 healthy skaters prior to the start of the regular season on Oct. 9.

“It was movement by design. We don’t play until Wednesday. They had the day off yesterday. We want them to ramp up,” said Arniel.

“I had a talk with them before. The five-on-five, especially, was all the things we’ve been preaching, what we’ve been practicing, systems-wise. Try to take the compete level up like it’s a game. Guys get reps with each other. It was a lot of what I like. A lot of what I was looking for.”

The Jets will have to cut two goaltenders and, depending on whether they want to start the year with 22 or 23 healthy players, either nine or 10 skaters. At this point, netminder Thomas Milic and one of Eric Comrie or Kaapo Kahkonen is a given, while Dmitry Kuzmin, Tyrel Bauer and Simon Lundmark on the blue-line are a safe bet to be Moose-bound.

But tough decisions are looming on whether Elias Salomonsson breaks camp with the big club — and if he does, at the expense of whom? — along with how the forwards shake out.

Salomonsson would not require waivers to go down, while Dylan Coghlan and Haydn Fleury would. Up front. Brad Lambert and Nikita Chibrikov do not, while Mason Shaw, Jaret Anderson-Dolan, Axel Jonsson-Fjallby, David Gustafsson, Rasmus Kupari and Dominic Toninato all would.

Salomonsson has clearly caught the coach’s eye. He’s dressed in three of the first four preseason games and now finds himself getting a look inside the top six, which has been given a bit of a jolt with Stanley (knee) and Heinola (ankle) both undergoing surgery last week and out at least a month.

“For a young guy coming over it’s great to see that he’s catching on with what we’re trying to teach, going from the big rink over there in Europe to this ice. I thought every game he’s gotten better,” Arniel said of Salomonsson.

“He’s getting more and more comfortable each day. He’s a big prospect for us. We often talk about the forward guys, but he’s kind of gone under the radar. He’s a prospect we’ll be relying on in the not-too-distant future. The thing about him is he does have a good first touch, a good first pass. He’s heady, he reads the game pretty well, he’s got good feet.”

Winnipeg has two preseason games remaining. They’ll host Calgary on Wednesday at Canada Life Centre, then travel to Alberta to face the Flames on Friday night.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

X: @mikemcintyrewpg