MORNING LINES
Neither team hit the ice this morning with the early puck drop, but they did hold practices on Friday at Canada Life Centre. Based on those, this is how we expect them to look today:
WINNIPEG JETS
FORWARDS
Connor-Scheifele-Vilardi
Ehlers-Perfetti-Niederreiter
Iafallo-Lowry-Appleton
Barron-Kupari-Namestnikov
DEFENCE
Morrissey-DeMelo
Samberg-Pionk
Dillon-Schmidt
GOAL
Hellebuyck
Brossoit
HEALTHY SCRATCHES
Gustafsson, Stanley, Chisholm
INJURED
Heinola
FLORIDA PANTHERS
FORWARDS
Verhaeghe-Barkov-Rodrigues
Samoskevich-Luostarinen-Tkachuk
Cousins-Lundell-Reinhart
Lomberg-Stenlund-Lorentz
DEFENCE
Forsling-Ekman-Larsson
Mikkola-Kulikov
Mahura-Balinskis
GOAL
Bobrovsky
Stolarz
HEALTHY SCRATCHES
Sourdif, Reilly
INJURED
Bennett, Ekblad, Montour
NOTABLE QUOTABLES
• Panthers coach Paul Maurice on feeling positive despite a 2-0 opening-night loss in Minnesota:
“I think we had the feeling when we left the bench that it was pretty clear we were a real good defensive team. Played hard. Generated enough, for sure. I think there’s more we could do with that. I would take that game replicated over and over.”
• Jets coach Rick Bowness, on both his team and the Panthers likely feeling they should be 1-0 instead of 0-1.
“I watched the game, they were all over Minnesota from the drop of the puck. They had a great start to the game. We talked to the players about that this morning. So they’re in the same boat, they come out of their game saying ‘wow, we really played well and we don’t have a point to show for it’. But again over the course of 82 games I’m going to stand here some nights and say ‘well we didn’t play very well but we found a way to win a game cause our goalie was great’, that’s going to even itself out, you don’t get beat up about that.”
• Jets captain Adam Lowry on still riding an emotional high from the long-term signings of both Connor Hellebuyck and Mark Scheifele earlier in the week:
“We’re still thrilled for them. To have those two guys locked up is certainly a big elephant out of this room. I think we’re really excited and optimistic about the changes we made going into this system. Everyone’s always jacked up going into the first game, and it shouldn’t be any different with first game at home tomorrow. We’re really looking forward to that.”
WHAT WE’RE WORKING ON
Mike and Kenny will have double coverage from downtown, including full game analysis, soundbites out of the dressing room and much more. You can read it all online at winnipegfreepress.com.
|
