Lowry back in lineup tonight as Jets venture into eye of Hurricanes

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This article was published 08/03/2019 (2375 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

RALEIGH — Could a Storm Surge be in the forecast tonight?

The Winnipeg Jets certainly hope not, as they try to get back in the win column against a red-hot Carolina Hurricanes team. Backup goalie Laurent Brossoit gets the start in net, while shutdown centre Adam Lowry returns to the lineup after finishing up a two-game suspension.

Lowry missed Thursday’s practice in Raleigh due to illness but participated in this mornings skate and is good to go, coach Paul Maurice said. Trade deadline acquisition Par Lindholm is expected to come out of the lineup for Lowry, who will likely go back to anchoring the third line between Bryan Little and Brandon Tanev.

Andrew Copp slides back down to the fourth line between Mathieu Perreault and Jack Roslovic, while the top two lines remain intact. No other lineup changes are expected, meaning Matt Hendricks and Bogdan Kiselevich will also be healthy scratches.

Winnipeg (39-23-4) begins the day in second place in the Central Division, one point back of the Nashville Predators, with three games in hand. Right behind them are the St. Louis Blues, now just four points back of the Jets.

“Every game counts. It has been all season. Right now, everything is so tight, it’s fun hockey,” Jets forward Nikolaj Ehlers said this morning. “It’s hard to explain. If you lose one game, you go down maybe one or two spots. If you win one, you go up one or two. We’ve got to find our game. We don’t want to worry too much about what happens in those other games. We want to give ourselves the best chance we can to put ourselves in a good spot.”

The Hurricanes (36-23-7) have gone 5-0-1 in their last six games, 8-1-1 in the past 10 and 11-2-1 in the past 14. They are in a Eastern Conference wild-card playoff spot, two points up on Columbus. They’ve been riding a wave of momentum lately and taking the league by “storm” with their creative, post-victory Storm Surge celebrations at PNC Arena.

Winnipeg beat Carolina 3-1 in their only other meeting this season on Oct. 14 at Bell MTS Place.

Maurice did have one notable update this morning, saying injured defenceman Dustin Byfuglien has flown back to Winnipeg for further treatment on an ankle injury suffered Feb. 14. Byfuglien skated by himself earlier in the week, and Maurice had been hopeful he might join the full team for a skate towards the end of the week.

But plans have obviously changed, although Maurice wouldn’t describe it as a setback.

“He went back to get a new treatment. Not as a change of course of action, just it was something they thought they could do after a certain period of time. So he went back to get that taken care of,” said Maurice.

Byfuglien initially suffered an ankle injury on Dec. 29, which kept him out of the lineup for 15 games. He then returned in early February, played five games, got hurt again and will now miss a ninth straight game tonight. A return is still at least a week away, if not longer.

The Jets began the road trip with a 5-2 win Sunday night in Columbus, then lost 5-2 Tuesday night in Tampa to the league-leading Lightning. They wrap things up with a visit to the nation’s capital Sunday and a date with the defending Stanley Cup-champion Washington Capitals.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg

PROJECTED JETS LINEUP:

GOAL:

Brossoit

FORWARD:

Laine-Scheifele-Wheeler

Connor-Hayes-Ehlers

Tanev-Lowry-Little

Roslovic-Copp-Perreault

DEFENCE:

Beaulieu-Trouba

Kulikov-Myers

Chiarot-Niku

SCRATCHED: Lindholm, Hendricks, Kiselevich

INJURED: Byfuglien, Morrissey, Morrow