Chemistry kicking in

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This article was published 04/10/2014 (4001 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It didn’t count in the standings, but make no mistake — Saturday night’s final Winnipeg Jets pre-season game wasn’t meaningless.

For starters, head coach Paul Maurice sent out a veteran-laden lineup against the Calgary Flames at the MTS Centre that more closely approximated the lineup he will use when the club opens their regular season Thursday in Glendale against the Arizona Coyotes than anything seen in six previous pre-season games.

And for another, the consensus in the dressing room earlier on Saturday was the Jets needed to treat Saturday’s game as a serious test, to serve as a springboard into that looming regular season.

“We’ve got to play this one like it’s the real deal,” defenceman Jacob Trouba said following the morning skate. “We’re getting close and it’s time to start playing well, getting back together as a team and clicking.”

So how’d that work out? Well, not only did the Jets defeat the Flames 4-1 to finish their pre-season at 3-4, they showed flashes of exactly the kind of chemistry they were hoping to build this training camp, particularly from the Evander Kane-Mark Scheifele-Blake Wheeler line.

With the Jets trailing 1-0, Wheeler got Winnipeg’s first goal midway through the first period, setting up shop in front of the Calgary net and then deflecting a point shot from defenceman Paul Postma, who had a pair of assists in his first action of the pre-season after missing most of training camp with a lower-body injury.

Wheeler was also running interference in front of the net on the Jets second goal, as Trouba took a pass from Kane and fired past Calgary netminder Jonas Hiller.

Kane added a goal of his own two minutes into the third period, converting a slick pass from Scheifele for his first of the pre-season.

Kane was asked if Saturday night’s outing by his line is what chemistry looks like.

“I think so. And I think it’s only going to get better and better as we play together,” he said. “I think we all felt pretty good about our game and I think we probably needed that a little bit to prove to one another we can play together.”

Bryan Little rounded out the Jets scoring, scoring into an empty net with under two minutes to play.

The lone Calgary goal came on their second shot of the game as forward David Jones picked up a loose puck behind the Winnipeg net and walked out front untouched to beat goaltender Ondrej Pavelec.

What about Pavelec?

Playing in his fourth game of the pre-season, Pavelec was solid in turning away 17 of 18 shots. He got no help from his defence on a breakdown that led to Calgary’s lone goal.

With the performance, Pavelec finished the pre-season turning away 76 of 82 shots for a .927 save percentage.

What about the kids?

Jets rookies Nikolaj Ehlers, Nic Petan and Josh Morrissey all sat out the final pre-season game, while rookie forward Adam Lowry did play.

Whether that’s a harbinger of things to come as the Jets make their final cuts in the next couple days remains to be seen. But Maurice was gushing in his praise of Lowry after the club’s morning skate on Saturday and the youngster did nothing in the game to alter the almost universal concensus out of training camp he is the most NHL-ready of the Jets highly-touted rookies right now.

Now what?

With forward Eric Tangradi clearing waivers Saturday and getting reassigned to the Jets’ AHL affiliate in St. John’s, the team as of this morning has 31 players still on the roster. They need to get down to 23 roster players, plus injuries, by Tuesday at 4 p.m., meaning some tough decisions and uncomfortable conversations will be taking place at the MTS Centre over the next 48 hours.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca