Let’s get this party started

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/09/2015 (3695 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If the fix is what you need, be it punching up “True North” during the national anthem or seeing your team ignite a red lamp or just feeling the cosy fit of one of the NHL’s loudest buildings, then today is your lucky day.

Training camp turns to game action as the Winnipeg Jets’ pre-season begins tonight at the MTS Centre with a 7 p.m. contest against the Minnesota Wild.

It marks the resumption of NHL games in town, last seen in late April with Winnipeg’s quick exit from the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The Jets return with seven pre-season games this fall, four of them at home.

The Edmonton Oilers (Friday), Ottawa Senators (next Tuesday) and Calgary Flames (next Thursday) follow the Wild into town.

The Jets have been officially back at work since last Thursday and after four full days of practice, start the chore of continuing the progress they made last season.

The team’s pre-season games, though, have a slightly different focus.

Game shape and speed is the goal of many veterans. Younger players are looking to make their mark and that’s the predominant storyline for this year’s Jets camp and pre-season.

There would appear to be as many as four jobs open on the forward lines and as many as a dozen players are in the serious bidding process for that work.

“Everybody’s got through the four days,” Jets head coach Paul Maurice said after Monday’s workouts at the MTS Iceplex. “You learn not to get excited for a good practice from anyone. You probably open your eyes a little bit if you think a guy’s not fitting in or he’s struggling to be a part of the group. And now we’re at the start of the exhibition games but they’re still just exhibition games.

“There’s a whole other gear to this but you need see all those players who are competing for the job.”

Along with the competing, the coach will indulge in some experimentation with forwards.

That begins tonight when he will play Alex Burmistrov between wingers Mathieu Perreault and 19-year-old Nikolaj Ehlers.

“It’s something I wanted to see early in camp,” Maurice said. “Absolutely no idea if it’s going to work but I know what I’ll see if I like it and what I won’t like about that line.”

The coach is making no guarantees about his experiments.

“This is the starting point,” he said. “It’s kind of a function of what I’m doing with some other lines, to put the three of them together.

“There’s a chance it could look really good and work well and if I can get them in the right rotation in the lineup, you’ll have no problem with having a line come off the bench in the hole that they will with an awful lot of skill and not a lot of size. We don’t all have to look the same.

“We have to play the same game but we don’t have to look the same way doing it.”

The Jets have some nagging, small health issues at the start of their preparations for the Oct. 8 seasonstarter in Boston.

Captain Andrew Ladd and forwards Bryan Little, John Albert and Anthony Peluso, as well as defencemen Andrew MacWilliam and Jan Kostalek have all missed some ice time since Friday.

But with 55 players on the camp’s roster, there are plenty of options for the first competition of camp.

“We’ve got them all sore and a little stiff and we’ve gotten some good intensity out of them,” Maurice said. “I don’t know how much legs we have for tomorrow night but I’m not really overly concerned about that. We’ll get a good pace.

“We got what we wanted out of the first four days. Enjoyed having an extra day of practice that you normally don’t get.”

The Jets get right back into game action on Wednesday, travelling to Edmonton for the first of their three exhibition road games.

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca