Jets happy to see AHL farm team in action

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This article was published 15/02/2021 (1665 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba Moose are finally loose — and members of the Winnipeg Jets couldn’t be happier for those in the pipeline who’ve been waiting patiently to get their season underway.

“It’s huge. Obviously it’s the feeder league for the NHL, so being able to develop in that league and turn into an NHL player, it’s great. And to see them finally starting back up again, it’s what those players need,” Jets forward Mason Appleton said prior to Monday’s Moose season-opener at Bell MTS Place against the Toronto Marlies. 

“You can only practice for so long and get so much better in practice. You really develop playing in games, and that’s where you take the next step in your career. So that league finally getting going is awesome.”

Appleton knows first-hand the benefits, with 120 AHL games on his resume. As does Jets forward Kyle Connor, who spent parts of two seasons with Pascal Vincent’s club on the farm before becoming a regular with the Jets.

“That’s good to see that get going. It’s tough for some guys. I was talking to (Dylan) Samberg. I don’t know when the last time he played a game was, like almost a year ago. It’s probably nice for a lot of those guys to just get back on the ice and we all love the game,” said Connor.

This NHL season is unique in that every team must carry a taxi squad of between four and six players, which is the equivalent of hockey purgatory. Defencemen Logan Stanley and Nelson Nogier, and forwards David Gustafsson and Dominic Toninato currently occupy Winnipeg’s. They are not on the 23-man Jets roster, nor can they play games at the AHL level while there. Stanley (13 games) and Gustafsson (4 games) have both seen some action with the Jets this year, while the other two have not. 

“(Moose players) will be in some ways within two weeks sharper than some of the poor fellows on the taxi squad who can’t get into the games. Because our practices now are almost non-existent and that’s going to become even more true in March when we just won’t practice our team for a month,” said Jets coach Paul Maurice.

“It’s very difficult to stay in game shape if you’re not in games, so that’s very critical. One of the things I tried to articulate to the Ville Heinola’s of the world is we really, really like them as players, the organization values them, and that’s true of Samberg, and we’ve got Gustafsson here. But the guys in a normal year wouldn’t be sitting around not playing. They would be playing big minutes with the Moose and developing and getting better and when somebody got injured they’d get their call-up chance and away you’d go.”

If they stay healthy at the NHL level, the Jets could conceivably rotate players between the taxi squad and the Moose in an attempt to keep everyone sharp. 

“(Until now) you have this sort of strata of really good players that weren’t in your lineup, they got no place to play, and they start to wonder just how much does the franchise value me? So that part kind of goes away, they get to go down there and say the Moose coaches love me because they’re playing me 22 minutes a night, I get to stay sharp,” said Maurice.

“We’re going to go on a run of like 28 games in 52 days, we’re going to need our whole bench, our whole roster, and we’re going to need that American League playing to bring guys up that are game-ready to play.”

Players miss the fans

 

They may be gone, for now. But fans are definitely not forgotten when it comes to playing hockey at the highest level in an otherwise empty rink.

Jets defenceman Nathan Beaulieu, asked what has stood out a month into this new NHL season, was quick to note the sound of silence is a factor so far.

“I think the no fans is definitely wearing on guys the more that it goes on, especially with games that are emotional and tight. If you need that extra boost, if you’re playing a back-to-back, I think we miss the fans more than we (let on),” said Beaulieu.

“They’re such a big part of our game. Playing the same teams over and over, your video cuts down and you kind of know what to expect when you’re showing up at the rink, so there’s not a lot of surprises. But personally, the fans … you don’t really realize how much you miss them until they’re not there.”

You’ll get no arguments from Jets coach Paul Maurice on that point.

“We are all so thankful that we are playing, so I want to put out you can include all of the appropriate qualifiers of how fortunate we are that we can play. But this is nowhere near as much fun. So playing is way more fun than not playing, but it’s way off playing without fans. It’s not nearly as much fun. It’s not nearly as exciting. It is kind of like if there were never any fans in the building, and I’m not quite sure how excited you would be to do this job. It’s kind of mechanical a little bit,” said Maurice.

“There is not that energy, that juice, that excitement. And that’s true on the road too. Sometimes winning the game on the road is even more fun because you depress 20,000 people. That sounds terrible, but it’s true. You come in and you’re out-playing them, the fans are booing their own team. There is an energy that comes out of that. I can’t agree more with Nathan on this. I just don’t want it to sound like a complaint. This is more true than ever.”

Absence definitely makes the heart grow fonder, and Maurice believes a valuable lesson will come from all of this.

“I think this is actually great for the NHL and the players to go through. Because they truly have an appreciation for how much the fans bring to the building and I certainly – from a coach’s point of view – the national anthems aren’t as good. They’re trying and they’re singing them, but it’s just not the same and we will be really, really happy when we get people back in the building, for sure,” he said.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg