Jets’ young and new players will get a chance to impress tonight and Saturday

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This article was published 01/10/2015 (3637 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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The Winnipeg Jets young guns and new faces are getting another glorious opportunity to make an impression with the club’s brass.

The Jets have two preseason games remaining – tonight against the Calgary Flames at MTS Centre (7 p.m.; TSN3/TSN 1290) and Saturday in Cowtown – and head coach Paul Maurice isn’t going to have the likes of Nic Petan, Nikolaj Ehlers and JC Lipon, along with long-time pro Thomas Raffl, wasting away at the end of the bench.

Petan will move from left to right wing tonight and play on the club’s top line with Andrew Ladd and Bryan Little; Ehlers and Raffl will flank Mark Scheifele and Lipon is working with Andrew Copp and Anthony Peluso.

And, first and foremost, for those guys still trying to crack the 23-man roster is this:

“Fit with the other people around him,” said Maurice after Thursday’s skate. “The group that’s here, you would say all of them are going to play in the National Hockey League for the Winnipeg Jets at some point. You use somewhere between 23 and 40 guys over the course of a season, depending on how banged up you get.

“Thomas Raffl is a bit of a question mark because of the contract situation that he would have to pass before that becomes true of him (he is on a professional tryout after leaving his Austrian club). But the guys that are here now are going to play for the Winnipeg Jets.”

Petan’s promotion to the right wing on the top line says a lot about what the club likes about him: his versatility and the layers to his game. Maurice, like all NHL coaches, wants to have a forward crew that can move from one side to the other and already has five players in his projected Top 9 who have played centre.

“Up front you just love the guys who, at times, were centremen and now can play either wing because you can just find a place for them all over your lineup,” he said. “We really didn’t have any of that a year a half ago and when we lost (Mark Scheifele) we were in a heap of trouble, we just didn’t have any centre icemen, the wingers were lefties and they didn’t like going to the other side.

“Now, you’re going to see it tonight: we’ll have three wingers playing on the off side that they played last game (Petan, Alex Burmistrov and Raffl) just to see how comfortable they are. The more wingers you have that can play both sides and the more guys that you have that have spent some time at centre you can just move your lines around a lot.”

Six players will dress tonight that did not play in Tuesday’s win over Ottawa: Lipon, Raffl, Anthony Peluso, Adam Pardy, Jacob Trouba and Jay Harrison.

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPEdTait