Lipon is Jets’ shift disturber

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This article was published 19/01/2016 (3550 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Just so everyone is clear, the J.C. Lipon story did not begin with him staying out late on a backyard rink imagining finishing his checks or scraping his stick across a opponent’s ribs when the referees were looking elsewhere.

After all, there isn’t a kid on the planet whose National Hockey League dream involves playing the… ummm, well, what’s the best way to describe this role, anwyay?

“I guess,” said Lipon with a grin Monday morning, just hours before his NHL debut against the Colorado Avalanche, “you’d say it’s pest or rat.”

And yet ask around the American Hockey League, where Lipon has spent the last 21/2 years with the St. John’s IceCaps and Manitoba Moose, and his rivals will say all of those terms — pest, rat, or shift disturber — all fit.

Again, though, this isn’t a gig a guy dreams about, but morphs into instead over time. Nobody wore Ken Linseman jerseys back in the day. Ditto for Matt Cooke, Matthew Barnaby or Sean Avery since then. But all of those pests managed to carve out long NHL careers.

Here’s the abridged version of how Lipon got here, courtesy the man himself:

“When I came to junior at 16 I was small, 5-8. I didn’t really know what I was doing out there. At 17 I wasn’t getting the ice time I thought I’d get so I started mixing in some fights and started enjoying that, what it did for the team and how the boys appreciated it after.

“At 18 I developed some offensive skills, I got put with some good players, and started over again.”

But the road from there to here has hardly been pothole-free. Lipon was passed over twice in the NHL draft before the Jets selected him in the third round in 2013. A point-per-game player in his last two years in junior with the Kamloops Blazers, Lipon realized the agitator/bottomsix role was his route to the bigs. And in many ways that makes his transition from the AHL to NHL simpler.

Jets coach Paul Maurice wasn’t asking Lipon to drop the gloves or get up in somebody’s grill in his debut, but simply this: be hard to play against.

“I’m not looking for that (pest) idea,” said Maurice. “I’m looking at the Matt Halischuk mould. Matt’s not calling guys out between the whistles or barking at guys. You have to spend some time in the league before you figure out who you are supposed to talk to and who you are supposed to get to.

“You’re not out there to toe-drag and make plays, you’re out there to make sure that when it’s your time to be on the puck you win more battles than you lose. It’s that energy.

“He brings lots and lots of energy,” Maurice added. “He doesn’t get to the dark areas late. He plays hard, goes to the net hard. He plays the kind of game that we’re really trying to play right now and he’s earned it. He had a really good camp. We stayed healthy for a long time and he played that game with the Moose, so he’s the right guy.”

Interestingly, Lipon almost missed his call to the show. He was deep into a pre-game nap for Sunday’s Moose game against the Charlotte Checkers when his phone came to life with an unknown number.

“I wasn’t going to answer,” said Lipon, who had his parents and grandparents in the MTS Centre for his debut, “but luckily I did. Then I had to make sure that it wasn’t a pretty deep dream and I had a flight at 4:30 back home.

“It’s been two years, so finally to get that call-up is pretty special.”

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPEdTait