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What to watch as puck drops on Jets training camp

Welcome to a Winnipeg Jets training camp like no other — one where the on-ice storylines and battles threaten to be trumped by what’s happening away from the rink.

Yes, the dark cloud that is the Connor Hellebuyck situation looms over the organization as it prepares to try and turn the page on a terrible 2025-26 campaign which ended with a 26th-overall finish.

It’s not going to be easy, especially in a highly competitive Central Division and Western Conference and with such a major unresolved issue.

But the work starts now, and Free Press hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe get you set for what to expect ahead of the 84-game regular season, which begins Oct. 2.

Manitoba mineral production set to triple, premier says

Premier Wab Kinew said Tuesday Manitoba plans to triple mineral production in the next five years “to unlock a new era of wealth creation and growth.”

“We’re going to make sure that opportunity is spread throughout the province,” he told a news conference at the Canada investment summit in Toronto.

The province is working with industry and Indigenous governments to send a message to investors that “we’re going to do mining right in Manitoba,” the premier said.

For too long, Manitoba has lagged behind neighbouring provinces, Kinew said.

Suspension on the horizon for Hellebuyck as pre-season set to start

In this high stakes game of chicken, Kevin Cheveldayoff, Connor Hellebuyck or any of the potential suitors for the Winnipeg Jets franchise netminder appear ready to blink.

New in paper

Realm of Ice and Sky: Triumph, Tragedy, and History’s Greatest Arctic Rescue

By Buddy Levy (St. Martin’s, $28)

A disastrous trek to the North Pole by Italian aeronautical engineer Umberto Nobile in 1928, and the efforts to rescue his crew, are chronicled.

The Slicks: On Sylvia Plath and Taylor Swift

Powerful personal drama provides both bark and bite

Well before playwright Rafaella Marcus’ words have the chance to entangle us in the stickiness of Sap, the performance space initiates the task in director Elio Zarrillo’s staging of this discomfiting and affecting story of restraint and liberation.

Shortly after the audience takes its seats in four segments surrounding a central channel — a shimmering tunnel containing cellist Grace Morningstar — it becomes clear as actors Hera Nalam and Liz Whitbread make their way around the tight corners of David Oro and Hazel Venzon’s set that certain actions will go unseen unless viewers keeps their heads on a swivel: in a production meant to uproot understanding, a fixed perspective will never do.

In this vulnerable and powerful production from Theatre by the River (105 minutes) the actors meet the excellence of Marcus’s twisty script, which calls for emotionally draining and jolting depictions of a relationship headed down a rocky road.

Nalam plays a young communications pro for a women’s aid charity whose dating life is a work in progress. She’s bright and optimistic, taking notice of elements of nature that nobody else seems to recognize. On her daily commute, she looks out from the bus window in awe of a home overflowing with branches and leaves.