Clock ticking as players fight to make Jets

By: Gary Lawless Posted: 9:32 AM CDT Monday, Sep. 26, 2011

ST. JOHN 'S, Nfld. - Claude Noel is ready to see his team start to take shape and the clock is ticking on players hoping to find work with the Jets.

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ST. JOHN 'S, Nfld. - Claude Noel is ready to see his team start to take shape and the clock is ticking on players hoping to find work with the Jets.

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/09/2011 (5152 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. JOHN ‘S, Nfld. – Claude Noel is ready to see his team start to take shape and the clock is ticking on players hoping to find work with the Jets.

The Jets will take on the Ottawa Senators on Monday here at Mile One Centre and Noel will use the game to narrow down his focus in terms of his regular season roster.

“We still have 50 some guys in camp and two groups with the other playing last night in Carolina”, said Noel, minutes after his team took its morning skate. “Two groups and two teams. You’d like to win them all but what’ s more important right now is the assessment and were some pretty good assessment on a lot of guys right now. “

JOHN WOODS/ The Canadian Press archives
Claude Noel — JOHN WOODS/ The Canadian Press archives Claude Noel

Noel says team management will make major cuts as early as Tuesday.

“In our mind we re getting down in numbers but we’ re not down in numbers physically”, he said. “We’ re trying to determine who the bubble players are going to be. Who are the guys that are gonna compete for jobs in our last two pre-season games. We ‘ll see who can play with travel and who can play on the road and some of the things we re looking for. Can checkers play with skill guys. Because I don ‘t know these players as well as I ‘d like to and I’ ve done all the studying I can do. We ‘ll pare down to somewhere around 30 players shortly after we get home. “

Noel says he’ ll open the season with 25 players on his roster.

“We’ ll get down to the guys that are competing for jobs and then let ‘s go”, he said. “I ‘ll have 23 players on the opening roster with two other guys injured”, said Noel.

Rookies Paul Postma and Mark Scheifele need to provide results if they want to get a longer look.

“They were the poster kids after the first game and everybody had them pegged for the big club and then you saw a different game”, said Noel. “That puts the wild card in this game and let’ s see what we’ ve got. It ‘s a man ‘s league and this isn ‘t even close to what it ‘s going to be. “

Ondrej Pavelec will start in goal for the Jets while Alex Auld gets the start for the Senators.

gary.lawless@freepress.mb.ca