Blake Wheeler is fine and back on the ice after puck-to-head hit on Friday

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This article was published 21/11/2015 (3586 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Blake Wheeler is fine but admittedly a little shaken by Friday’s puck-to-the-head scare at Winnipeg Jets practice.

“As long as I don’t get hit in the same spot, it should be good,” Wheeler said this morning, back on the MTS Centre ice after leaving it in serious distress on Friday.

Then, late in practice, he was felled by friendly fire — a Dustin Byfuglien point shot that hit him in the head.

Wheeler said that he had serious concern about 22 hours earlier.

“It was pretty painful obviously,” he said. “A puck right to the head is pretty painful. It was initially pretty bad and luckily it hit me in a spot with a lot of bone.”

You can be certain there’s been some grief for Byfuglien after that incident.

Wheeler cracked a wry smile in that regard this morning.

“He’s been shooting at my head for five years now, to be honest,” he said. “It’s actually kind of amazing it took that long to finally hit me. I’m six-five, it’s kind of a long ways to shoot up to hit somebody in the head but Buff’s pretty incredible.”

Wheeler was in his regular slot alongside Bryan Little and Andrew Ladd for this morning’s game-day skate and will skate there tonight. The Jets meet the Arizona Coyotes at 6 p.m. tonight (Sportsnet, TSN1290).

“He’s 100 per cent,” Jets coach Paul Maurice said today. “That’s what the docs say. He wouldn’t tell you if he was 85 anyway. He’s a tough kid. He’ll play through it. He’s got a big smile on his face skating around so he’s fine.”

Winnipeg moved to 9-9-2 with a 4-1 home victory over Vancouver on Wednesday night.

“I think we can build off that,” Wheeler said. “I think we had a good effort in St. Louis (last Monday, a 3-2 loss). We kind of regained some confidence in what we do. We kind of looked like ourselves again and I think we built on that, had a really strong third period.

“Just get off to a good start tonight. These guys work hard. They’re a young bunch and they’re pretty quick so it’ll be a tough challenge tonight.”

That was the theme Maurice discussed this morning about the 10-8-1 Coyotes, who are 7-4-1 on the road.

“They’ve changed their look a little,” he said. “The big thing is they’ve got four really veteran guys down the middle (Martin Hanzal, Antoine Vermette, Kyle Chipchura, Boyd Gordon) and that lets them get a couple of young guys on the wing and they’ve got good speed on the wings.

“So they’re a little bit more offensively dynamic than they’ve been in the past. So good puck-moves back there, goaltender back stopping the puck That was probably maybe their biggest challenge last year.

“They’re going to play a real solid, hard, structured game Hard on the puck. There won’t be a lot of easy puck movement. And quite a bit more speed that you’d remember from last year’s team.”

Arizona features two of the NHL’s best rookies so far this season, left-winger Max Domi, son of former Jets 1.0 tough guy Tie Domi, and left-winger Anthony Duclair.

Domi has 16 points so far this season, Duclair 12.

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca